Betting on Moxie

Financial firms on Wall Street habitually recruit professional poker players to their ranks because of players’ calculating abilities and tolerance for risk. “The rising popularity of online poker has created, in effect, a huge farm team for Wall Street trading desks…Wall Street’s interest in poker players comes with a certain irony in the aftermath of a global financial crisis, which many blame on reckless risk-taking by big banks. The government’s recent fraud lawsuit against Goldman Sachs targets just such behavior.”