Wall Street loves chess, and chess champions and other gaming experts may very well have developed skills that assist them to excel in the kind of analytical decisions required by high-level investing of the type that hedge funds make.
So says a New York Times article that looks at the chess connection—the link between skilled players and skilled investors, many of whom got their start at hedge funds through their abilities in moving from square to square. Citing such luminaries as Boaz Weinstein, Peter Thiel, and Douglas Hirsch, all of whom manage hedge funds and who are either chess luminaries or enthusiasts, the article points to a correlation that they say exists between the kind of advance-move thinking required by someone with the talent to become a grand master and the kind of thinking required to shuffle millions—or billions—of dollars on the market.
Weinstein said that the means of making decisions is a useful focus in both arenas. Chess playing, he said, teaches one to deal with the uncertainty inherent in any decision. In investing, he was quoted saying, "you can have an 80% chance of being right. And then the 20% comes up. But really it is the process that you used to make the decision."
