Poker and especially online poker are more similar to stock trading than meets the eye. For example let us say that you want to play a hand after it has been folded to you and you want to raise with it. Clearly this is a hand that you want to play and so in much the same way that you see stock that you want to buy. You may want to buy a certain stock but only under certain conditions unless the stock is exceptional. Take a hand like K-Q for example, this is a decent looking hand but if it has been raised and re-raised before it gets to you then you would never contemplate playing the hand (buying the stock).
But financial traders have to be aware of when prices move against them and the smart ones use stop orders as part of their money management tactics. It doesn’t matter how good a stock has looked prior to entry, if the price is going in the direction that is totally opposite to what you imagined then you need to have a stop loss so that you do not take a huge loss that could have been avoided.
This is like having say A-A before the flop which is the pre-flop nuts. This stock is a very good stock at this stage but what if you raised and it was called in two spots. The flop came Jc-10c-9d and you made a two thirds pot sized continuation bet. It then got raised and re-raised by the other two players. Clearly your stock (aces) are no longer good and continuing on with the hand is futile. This is where you need to cut loose. There are numerous similarities between trading and poker and for me this was what re-ignited my interest in the game.
