If examine closely, it turns out that there is much in common between those who earn money in the Forex market and those who spend their working days at poker tables online.
Analytical skills, intuition, ability to control themselves and measure statistical parameters - these and some other set of qualities are indeed needed both for a player of Forex, and a professional poker player. There are differences, undoubtedly. For example, the game of poker can only be played "manually": it is strictly forbidden to play by means of robots. Automated trading, however, is allowed, - it is a very common tool for Forex trading because ordering a trading robot, which would be suitable for the strategies, means to get rid of a variety of problems, including psychological ones.
So how much are Forex and poker alike?
Correlation between playing poker and trade currency pairs is quite logical. Forex trading involves high risk and does require special training. Other success factors - knowledge, experience, and emotional control - all these are very similar to a "bagpack" set of a poker player.
Rules of the game
Players
In forex, we compete with other traders, large hedge funds and major global banks - they all have a strong capital and expertise. Thus, we must carefully choose our positions and play in the most careful way. There are recognizable patterns of trading psychology, and you need to learn all of them in order to know how to predict steps of other traders. In poker it is. Our task is to figure out what a person is going to do.
Platform
Foreign exchange market - the largest and most liquid in the world: every day more than 4 trillion dollars circulate in it. There are no major players so that one person could "hack" the market, but global events, like from the world of politics may affect the market and change the position in the expected direction. In poker, simple luck is a much more important factor - we get the cards which we get, and we operate only with them. In Forex, however, luck is also extremely important, and you will catch it by its tail if you read a substantial amount of literature about it, and therefore you will be able to understand probabilities of your success. As in poker, you might experience some losses, but gradually, with more experience there will be less of them.
Constant practice
As is the case with online poker, you need to engage in trading hourly, consistently and constantly, always in accordance with the previously developed trading plan. First, you need to learn the procedures and understand all the basic things, doing the game on a demo version. Similarly, in poker: first online game goes on virtual money, and only when you feel you are ready to "go out into the world", you put some real money into your account. The majority of Forex brokers systems offer free demo version, where you can get acquainted with the market, choose your currency pairs and take roots, in a nutshell.
Analyse it
Technical Analysis in Forex will be your main tool, which by means of graphs, will help you to evaluate if you are moving in a right direction, or actually missing currencies. Many people believe that the movement of the market is completely subject to chance, but traders rely on technical analysis to understand the boundaries when it comes to selecting the entry and exit points in the market.
In addition, markets provide data for the fundamental analysis which traders should use in order to interpret the data and make decisions about where the market will move.
Analytical skills, the ability to quickly assess the probability and intuition to fulfil a successful strategy - do not you find it all too similar to online poker?
Emotional stability
Forex Trading is only a business process, which must be absolutely devoid of any emotion. You must follow your strategy, take the path of your logical decision-making process and in general, to think only with the coldest head in the world.
High income - high risk
Do not go astray: Forex trading is a huge risk. There is a very high failure rate among newcomers, because they are impatient and have lack experience in order to survive and - even more - to flourish. Exactly the same is true about poker players.
Successful trading - is not about passion and not about luck (as well as a successful poker game). It is about a game of strategies and iron self-discipline, the same way as in poker.
