Profiling the market

I have spent an awful lot of time over the past few years studying financial trading and this is something that I am now looking to merge more and more with my poker. In trading some years ago then a trader called Peter Steidlmayer invented what he called “Market Profile” which came to be seen by thousands of traders or would be traders in his seminal book “On Markets”. There are fantastic analogies and parallels between the two fields of online trading and online poker. The online poker environment is nothing more than a market after all. But just like in financial trading, the market evolved since its inception in around 1999.

Some mediocre (by today’s standards) poker players did very well during those first few years but most of them died off as winning players. A few survived by changing their strategies and coming back with new ways of playing the game. Some others survived by getting sponsored and financially backed in other areas. However if you want to prepare for a career in online poker these days then you need to assume one very important thing going in and this is that your opposition are going to be at least as tough as you. We can take valuable lessons from people like Peter Steidlmayer and use them in poker and in fact some very good poker players have taken to financial trading very well and the potential upside as a trader is far greater than as a poker player.

But in each instance then you have to figure out the market and its profile…….this means its inner heartbeat. While it is true that each market participant (poker player) will be unique by way of skill and how they approach the game, it is also true that each environment will be unique to everything else. What I mean by this is that a NL25 full ring game will be totally different to a NL25 six max game and a NL100 ring game etc. In fact a NL25 full ring game may be totally different to a NL25 full ring game on another network when you take into account player dynamics and the differences in rake and sign up bonuses. So each game has its own “profile” and within each “profile” comes each particular participant which once again adds a whole new different level of complexity. The next question is can you make money merely understanding the market profile of the game that you happen to be playing in?

Well the answer to that is yes and no because it basically means that you first need to know what the profile is for the game that you are playing in. Many online poker players never really figure out the profile of their game. To do that then you need to know several key things. Firstly what is the average player base doing? How do they look to make money from the game? Do they bluff and when? Other questions like what is their risk profile need to be answered? What size stacks do some of them like to play? Do they like playing big pots or small pots? Once you know and understand the answers to these questions then you can begin to chart a strategy to beat these players or to at least beat the market. Beating the “market” is not the same as beating individuals.

For example you can be a winning poker player in the same way that you can become a successful financial day trader. However this does not mean that you could beat every other poker player in your game or that you are better than everyone else. You can be +EV in the game even when you are –EV to certain individuals.