I don't want to win, I just want to be in the race (and not lose too terribly much). Much the same as how people like to run in marathons they know they can't win. I suspect it would be an interesting blend of things that I like.
You could argue that the bottom 50% are just the suckers - but of course, those who are worse than them have already been selected out. So the 'losers' you're competing with are either the newcomers, or those who did well in the past but are having a bad spree now.
What is going to be your strategy? If you're just going to apply Black-Scholes, well there are 1000's of people already doing that much better than you ever will. So you need a unique approach - either industry insight that you can quantify somehow, an unexplored statistical approach you know more about than most others.
There's an interesting guide with some suggested reading at
http://quantivity.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/how-to-learn-algo...
I have one that I am trading profitably and for which I have written a scientific paper which could be published (i.e. I can reasonably explain why the approach works and nobody found it yet).
Still searching for an investor in that space to scale it up; if anyone has ideas or knows who could be interested in seeding such strategies i would be glad about a mail (see profile for contact).
There's plenty of "academic interest" to be had without risking any real cash.
1. High frequency trading firms with sub-millisecond latency, who make their money from the bid-offer spread. You can't compete here.
2. Medium term traders who will hold a position for somewhere between hours and weeks. They tend to be looking for statistical regularities to exploit. If they find one, they don't expect it to persist for long - the typical 'half life' of a strategy is around six months. It's not impossible for an amateur to compete here, but be aware that there are thousands (tens of thousands?) of people for whom this is a full time job. Many (most?) of them have backgrounds in quantitative finance, have worked at funds and large investment banks, have PhDs in physics, mathematics, computer science etc. So you should ask yourself why you think you will be able to compete.
3. Long-term traders who are either stock picking, or actively managing a portfolio that might include stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies etc. Some of them are just trying to beat the market, and some are looking for absolute return. All the points in the OP article apply to this case.