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Tetris Effect - games to develop cognitive skills beneficial to trading
With more and more research surfacing about significant cognitive changes resulting from concentrated Tetris play in such areas as PTSD, spatial visualization or flow state, I am curious to hear if any traders have used Tetris or another video game(s) to specifically target trading skills. I have played Tetris and have experienced the Tetris Effect. Similarly after 25 years of professional trading I find myself evaluating everything - traffic patterns, checkout lines, changes in used car prices,...etc - in terms of a trade opportunity, risk and reward, supply and demand,...etc.
Particularly intriguing are reports about how quickly such games can measurably change cognitive traits. It also seems that Tetris players are able to more consistently enter a flow state. Seemingly lots of potential benefits.
My concern about games such as Tetris is their deterministic nature - while the order of falling shapes varies, there is complete certainty about the nature of any object and how it will impact the grid. As we know, successful traders recognize and respond to factors that mean different things under different conditions.
Please share any insight you may have on using games to develop cognitive skills beneficial to trading but not through a trading specific medium (so no chart arcade or sim/replay trading programs).
Hi Dicky, i agree with you, last i heard some do use games which are more 2 players and often require you to read your opponent as well for example, poker ( probability, reading your opponent's expression), rock paper scissors,
and also for me personally, i think games like starcraft 2 which require you to think strategically and guess your opponent's intentions with proper scouting plus figure out effective counter defenses help develop similar enough thinking processes which are positive for trading skill/thinking development. effectively in 2 player games, there is a constant subversion of the opponent's position to gain an advantage and hence it encourages the players to think on a strategic level not just what your opponent is doing, what he may be thinking, and what it means to you ( i.e. your current trade position). so mainly a similar enough thinking pattern to the essence of good trading is advantageous to also succeed well in these days.
I think the main difference between trading and video games is that videogames are "self contained" enviroments and are much more predictable. If you want to pass a certain level and you don't, the next time you play the exact same things will happen. In trading everything changes.... and there are no entry levels.
However I think they might benefit for pattern recognition. Above all if you never played a certain game the phase of discovering how it works might be more useful than playing again and again the same game.
One thing that happened to me, might be related to this topic.
When I was younger I had been playing classic guitar in a music academy for over 12 years, I was normally playing 4 to 6 hours a day, everyday. Then I left the music world and stopped practicing for over 10 yers.
Lately I started to practice agains and I had the feeling that I was becoming a lot smarter. I had the sensation that my brain was more present and "alive", I could almost feel as if some areas of the brain got awakened again.
Music is a great training for the brain, because there is a physical component to it. You can do as much intellectual activity as you want, but the control of muscles movements is much more demanding for the brain than any abstract thinking.
In terms of training the brain, I think anything that has a physical component is probable more valuable.
