Do Pro Poker Players Make Good Clients For A Financial Advisor?

[Vee Quiva]

I'll let a little secret out of the bag and just say that I am a Certified Financial Planner with a wirehouse in Arizona.

One of the newer trends in my business is building up your clientele by concentrating on a niche market like lawyers, doctors, etc.

I was wondering what the players on this site thought of having professional poker players as clients?

I have seen some threads that talk about how some of the big stars have little or no money and usually enter the big tournaments due to financial backing for investors. Obviously I want clients that have money of their own and are able to keep their gambling stake and their investment portfolio separate.

Is the nature of poker and gambling so much a polar opposite of conservative investing that I would be wasting my time?

Do any of the top poker players talk about their investments instead of poker?

[jakethebake]

[ QUOTE ]
I'll let a little secret out of the bag and just say that I am a Certified Financial Planner with a wirehouse in Arizona.

One of the newer trends in my business is building up your clientele by concentrating on a niche market like lawyers, doctors, etc.

I was wondering what the players on this site thought of having professional poker players as clients?

I have seen some threads that talk about how some of the big stars have little or no money and usually enter the big tournaments due to financial backing for investors. Obviously I want clients that have money of their own and are able to keep their gambling stake and their investment portfolio separate.

Is the nature of poker and gambling so much a polar opposite of conservative investing that I would be wasting my time?

Do any of the top poker players talk about their investments instead of poker?

[/ QUOTE ]
I'd guess they'd be lousy clients. Mostly because it would be really hard to get them to stock with any kind of long-term plan. I think you'd just be spinning your wheels and get frustrated. They'd never make contributions to the plans when they were supposed to, and be forever taking out money they weren't supposed to. Now if you were working at some kind of churn-and-burn chop shop they might be good clients for you. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Rasputin]

On the other hand, you could look at it as giving something back to the poker community.

If you're good at convincing players to go along with it, you'll be doing them a service.

I actually suspect that they are, as a group, less bad than perhaps they would have been 20 years ago.

Poker is not just for gambling degenerates anymore and the percentage of poker players who take bankroll management seriously has got to be higher now.

And what's the downside of giving it a shot? It's not like you're going to refuse non poker playing clients, just that you're trying to build yourself a niche clientele.

Go to some of the better, more responsible younger players and pitch it as a retirement rake. Put them on a plan of putting a certain percentage of their payoffs into a retirement fund just like those with real jobs do with their 401k.

[zaxx19]

Financial advisors lol.....
whatta joke, basically they kiss rich people ass all the time begging for some pennies its actually pretty sad... FORTUNE has also predicted this line of work will be absolutely extinct by 2015 so yu might wanna go back to school.

[Vee Quiva]

They have been predicting the demise of full service brokerage firms since Charles Schwab opened their doors. What was that like 25 years ago (or before you were born)?

I guess another measurement of success would be to compare the full service brokerage firms stock performance to that of Schwab or any of the internet trading firms.

I get paid to help my clients reach their financial goals. My clients' goals are never to beat the market. It's a secure retirement, putting their kids through college, or leaving a legacy for their kids or a charity. I then show them the most conservative way to reach their goals.

My real question is when you are out of school and have accumulated $200,000 of investments are you still going to feel absolutely sure of yourself on making 100% of your own investment decisions? Investing $2000 in a stock versus $30,000 can be a totally different decision, emotionally for a lot of people. The vast majority of investors with real wealth often feel more comfortable having an expert help them with these decisions are usually willing to pay something for the service. Plus a lot of the service I provide for my clients is not which investment I recommend, but stopping them from making a portfolio wrecking mistake by buying into the latest fad or headline from Fortune magazine.

[Seether]

I think this would be something interesting. I am playing pretty seriously now while I am still in college and although I am still building up my roll for higher limits I definantly see investing as something I plan to do down the line. I would be interested in something like this.

[splashthepot]

A different view, I think that since there are so few successful poker pros, the market is probably quite small. Even if they were good clients, I am not sure if you could make a living serving them unless you hooked a huge fish, no pun intended.

[Rasputin]

But there are a lot of people who think they're successful poker pros.

I still wouldn't think there would be enough of them to shut out all other clients but still if you get one guy and help him out and he talks about you to his friends...and so forth

[TStoneMBD]

i am currently playing poker for a living while building a bankroll at a solid pace (call me an aspiring professional if you will). while im only 19, i take poker and bankroll management very seriously and have some longterm plans that i may or may not adhere to in the future. when my bankroll hits 200k i plan to invest in real estate buying several units of apartments. it is important to me to be able to retire successfully at a young age, and therefore i could certainly use a financial advisor later on in my career. i am going to need a really talented accountant for next years tax returns as i certainly want to pay as little as possible of my earnings. however, i dont think that many professionals take their finances as seriously as they should, so you may not do so well specializing in this field. aside from that, what would you be able to offer a professional poker player that another financial advisor wouldnt be able to offer? i feel that i have good control over my finances. when i am able to begin investing i likely wont need a financial advisor until i reached a point in which my prosperity has grown in real estate, at which point i would need a financial advisor who specializes in real estate and not someone who specializes in maintaining bankroll management for a poker player.

so again my question arises, what can you offer to me that a cheaper, more experienced, less specialized advisor couldnt? or is it that you are simply interested in target marketing the poker player community?

[Vee Quiva]

The difference between using someone like me or someone at a discount firm is that I make a special effort to know everything about your financial life. We have products that address your assets and your liabilities. We don't just do stocks and bonds like the brokers of 20 years ago. I have clients where I have built portfolios for them and also handled their mortgage and then secured a line a credit for their business.

The main advantage would be if I established a few clients in the field of professional poker I could be known as the "financial advisor of poker players". Since I play a lot of poker I am very familiar with the ups and downs of the game and the intensely emotional swings that can come with it. This would give me the ability to empathize with other poker players much better than the average financial advisor that has only seen the game on tv.

Since my minimum account size is $100,000 I am interested in finding out if there are enough players out there that have set aside that much money that is separate from their poker playing bankroll. My gut instinct says no, but I put the question out there because I am interested in the opinions of others on this discussion board.