For anything specific to do with statistics, risk management, finance, or programming, you are always better off studying it directly, the normal way, instead of going through poker. The same is true for basically any hobby. It's a crutch that people use, and an excuse for them to slack off.

As someone that had both studied and researched statistics (publications) and played poker, I disagree. Studying these topics will leave you with an academic knowledge, not a practical and deeply learned knowledge.

There is a reason trading firms and hedge funds prefer to recruit good poker players. It's because it (i) teaches these concepts at a visceral, muscle-memory level, (ii) it teaches you to apply the concepts while under emotional strain (you may be surprised at the % of statistics professors will crumble totally when they have skin in the game), (iii) it teaches you to merge the concepts together (game theory, stats, etc) in a single cohesive decision-making framework. These are not skills that academic coursework can give you.

Consider an analogy: Is it better to learn programming through merely coursework/textbooks, or by picking up a project where code is required to complete that project?

It's also fun. It's the only reason many people get exposed to these important concepts without ever wanting to study statistics etc formally.

No one (prop/hedge funds) really does that anymore. Hiring poker players directly that is. Outside of really niche small firms with really specific cultures. It kinda almost happened with SIG and Jeans89 but Jeans already had a relevant degree on top of being a top 0.00001% player.

The direct analogies between poker and market making are already way thinner than many people make it out to be though they still exist. But I’d argue poker experience is basically completely useless for quant investing.

Nobody hires directly for it but it is considered favourably. SIG also has Bill Chen heading stat arb. Most firms I know of have a reasonably vibrant poker culture internally.

Is the head of stat arb now? I thought he was messing around with sports betting in Dublin or something.

Anyhow having played/discussed cards with quite a few trading and research people from SIG I can safely say the poker thing there is more marketing fluff than anything else. Pretty effective marketing though it seems. Which is fine of course, because trading is a completely different game.

For a very large set of people, motivation to study is absolutely key. If your motivation comes directly from learning the concept itself, you may be right that studying it directly is more effective. But for many, trying to do that because it's "better" will lead to worse outcomes when they end up not completing the study.

Calling it "an excuse to slack off" ignores that different people's motivations are different. If being interested in poker makes someone want to learn the underlying math, then that probably is the most effective way _for them_ to study it.

What I specifically found useful about poker is helps you internalize the process of applying theoretical knowledge through repeated practice playing and analyzing thousands of hands. The incomplete information and multiple factors involved also are a good training ground for the real world.

As a former professional player whose last two employers use poker as a marketing tool for hiring, I strongly agree. If you want to be good at a game, learn that game specifically.

What you say has the benefit of sounding like it might be possibly true, but years of scientific thought paying dividends in other areas in unexpected ways demonstrates the exact opposite.

For example, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies

Strangely I think it also helped me become a better doctor. I think it helps you develop a natural insight into probabilities and people's reactions to them, which in a roundabout way helps in diagnosis.

Are PT your initials? Or are you a physical therapist?

Neither! It's actually a reference to one of my favorite artists [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panayiotis_Vassilakis

Exactly! The inspiration of game theory was poker. John Von Neumann was interested in poker because he saw it as a path toward developing a mathematics for the real life.

> portfolio management

??

Poker is a high variance game. Aside from trying to get your money in while you think you've got an edge, you need to manage your bankroll through long periods of bad luck - make sure you're able to keep playing tomorrow, even if things go really bad today.

The difference is that poker is a game but finance is real life: physical resources, actual human lives. To operate at the game level of abstraction is sociopathic.

When real lives are involved, even more so do we owe it to our stakeholders to model the situations as carefully as possible, and figure out what the mathematically optimal strategies are.

Whether you apply the mathematical insights straight up is another question. But there's no excuse for being sloppy:

'Physical resources, actual human lives' deserve optimal play.

A sentimentality that treats a single photogenic orphan as more important than the plight of many does not cut it.

Just try to keep a handle on reality. People who play games tend to have a pretty loose grasp on the real world. Especially people who play games with other people's money.

> Just try to keep a handle on reality.

Yes, that's important. And it's also important to always keep in mind the limitations of your models. (That's constantly on people's mind in finance already, by the way.)

> People who play games tend to have a pretty loose grasp on the real world. Especially people who play games with other people's money.

Citation needed, I guess?

People who play money games literally have no idea what they're doing or what the real consequences of their actions are. They trade in weapons, they fund the destruction of human habitats, they undermine governments to put the desires of a small minority over the needs of the many. Yes they've lost their damn minds.

And when anyone points these things out, they complain and deny responsibility. "If I don't someone else will. Why is the government always on my ass trying to interfere?"

Are you talking about any one person in particular?

This seems like a whole hodgepodge of complaints about some boogeyman?

Eg for what it's worth, I've worked in finance on and off, and I can assure you that most people 'who play money games' do not 'trade in weapons'.

Trading weapons is a fairly specialized niche, and your average stock trader has no clue about that niche, even if they wanted to get into that specific market.

There might be other things wrong with people working in finance. But not all people you don't like engage in all the vices you don't like at the same time.

Btw, I suspect most weapons trading is done to prop up governments, not to undermine them. (Even thought neither you nor me might find the governments in question very sympathetic.)

Actually, I'm not sure you have noticed, but people in the real world tend to "play" "games" all the time. Whether it is trying to close a sale, convince someone the benefit of a going into a relationship, training an animal or teaching a child life skills. What you learn in playing games in a fairly safe environment, has wide application in the negotiation and assessments that we all use in everyday living

> People who play games tend to have a pretty loose grasp on the real world.

Don't lose track of the two senses of "game" being used.

The original post only mentioned game theory, and you complained "To operate at the game level of abstraction is sociopathic."

When we speak of the game abstraction in game theory, we are not talking about amusements. The term for the concept comes from the study of amusements, but in the context of game theory, a game is merely a situation where at least two participants make strategic decisions that effect each others' outcomes, potentially in the face of incomplete knowledge.

In this sense, "People who play games" are people who make mutual decisions which affect themselves and others.

There are plenty of poker players who play professionally and the bank roll management aspect of the game is an essential part of their job. Which is why at the highest level you'll find quite a complex ecosystem of players selling stakes in themselves to each other to lower the variance.

So the meta-game of poker is betting in your own competition as in buying shares on their possible (winning) stake.

That sounds a cool story either for a Doccumentary or maybe a webapp to easily manage that on the lower ranks where informality and everyone knowing each other might not be true?

No, this is a misunderstanding. It's about balancing how much you invest in today's game with how much you invest in tomorrows game. Preventing an unlucky streak from wiping you out and all that.

If you're a poker professional, the game of poker and your finances are very closely related.

Game theory is about making decisions in the face of uncertainty, especially as it applies to real life with high stakes. The core principles of game theory were developed and used for making specific military decisions in WW2 with actual lives at stake.

Since game theory is a tool that allows you to make better decisions than the intuitive biases would nudge you otherwise, to operate at a game level of abstraction is not sociopathic but a necessity - if physical resources and actual human lives are at stake, abandoning such formal reasoning would be reckless and grossly negligent.

Not folding when everyone else has may give you a market advantage, similarly being the first to fold may ensure you come out of the round in the best position.