Wall Street Firms Look to Poker for Recruits

Chris Fargis has gone from the felt to the trading floor.

If you’re wondering what you can do with your poker skills to find a job in the real world, the latest weekend edition of the Los Angeles Times might have a clue for you.

A feature in Sunday’s paper focused on Wall Street firms like Toro Trading and Susquehanna International who hire poker players for their analytical skills. Texts like Hold’em Poker for Advanced Players and The Theory of Poker have become required reading at some companies, who are turning away from the old way of hiring that focused on family connections and the right schools and are now looking for people who have already demonstrated that they’re capable of making split-second decisions for big money. 

“If someone’s been successful at poker then there’s a good chance they could be successful in this business,” Toro partner Danon Robinson told the Times. “If you have no interest, that’s almost a red flag…. It’s almost the equivalent of not reading the Wall Street Journal.”

The article makes particular note of Chris Fargis, a new hire at Toro who never took a finance or business class but nevertheless has the skills that make him a good fit for Wall Street. Fargis played high-stakes limit mixed games before moving to his Wall Street job, both online and at major tournaments around the U.S. But he also had several big poker tournament scores to his credit, among them a gold ring from the Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw event held at the 2006 WSOP Circuit in Tunica, Miss., and a second-place finish in a limit hold’em event at the 2005 LA Poker Classic. For years he maintained a blog, Twenty-One Outs Twice, that chronicled his trials and tribulations at the virtual felt.