Chris HarounProfessor and CEO at Haroun Education Ventures

Liar’s Poker: The Game That Reveals How Traders Really Think

Name: Liar’s Poker: The Game That Reveals How Traders Really Think
Uploaded: 2025-12-31T21:31:05+00:00
Duration: 49 s
Channel: Chris Haroun
Description: In this YouTube excerpt, Chris Haroun narrates the rules of the classic Wall Street bluffing game Liars Poker, describing how players use hidden serial…

31 Dec 2025 · 1 min

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In this YouTube excerpt, Chris Haroun narrates the rules of the classic Wall Street bluffing game Liars Poker, describing how players use hidden serial numbers on dollar bills to bid on the total count of a digit across both bills, raising bids aggressively to intimidate opponents and calling bluffs to determine the loser. Haroun shares a personal anecdote about beating billionaire investor Carl Icahn in a high‑stakes Liars Poker match, claiming the win brought him luck. He then explains how author Michael Lewis employs the game as a metaphor for Wall Street culture, illustrating how traders rely on confidence, bluffing, and risk‑taking rather than pure knowledge to dominate each other.

Chapters

I can't even lay eyes on his station from down here. Oh, you've seen it. Everyone's seen it. And everyone knows I won a huge Liars Poker game with it against Carl Icahn. It's brought me luck ever since. Now, in Liars Poker, traders play a bluffing game using serial numbers on a dollar bill to show who has more nerve. And here's how it works. This is fun. Each player has a dollar bill with a serial number hidden. Then they take turns bidding on how many total occurrences of a digit, meaning 0 to 9 appear across both bills combined. And players raise the bid, often aggressively, to intimidate others, even when they're bluffing. And when somebody calls a bluff, both bills are revealed, and whoever was wrong loses. Lewis uses this game as a metaphor for Wall street, showing how traders bluff, take risks, and try to dominate each other using confidence rather than knowledge.