Zen and the Art of Poker Book Review

A real diamond in the rough. Perhaps one of the best books ever written about trader psychology, and its not even about trading !

The following is taken from a review published on this site which sums up this book perfectly:

From the perspective of a trader, I loved this book. I find it ironic but strangely fitting that one of the best books on trading psychology I have ever come across turns out to be a flimsy little throwaway paperback that was not written about trading at all.

Poker and trading are strikingly similar disciplines. They are both one-man endeavors; they are both zero sum games played for financial gain at the expense of opponents; they are both oriented towards luck in the short run but skill in the long run; they both require proficiency in the realm of probability and statistics; they both require a taste for risk and an aversion to risk in equal amounts; they both require an ability to read the emotions of others while controlling the emotions within yourself; and they both see profits consistently flow from the losing many to the winning few over time. Because of these similarities, the skill sets of the poker player and the trader are in many ways interchangeable.