The more hands of online poker a player wins, the more money that person is likely to lose, concludes a study conducted by a Cornell sociology doctoral student. The likely reason being that multiple wins are common for small stakes poker, and the more someone plays, the more likely he or she will eventually be walloped by occasional – but significant – losses.

The study, which was published online in the December issue of the Journal of Gambling Studies, analyzed small-stakes, medium-stakes and high-stakes hands of No-Limit Texas Hold'em with six seats at the table. The research not only examined the "strategic demography" of poker at different levels of stakes and the various payoffs associated with different strategies at varying levels of play, but also "speaks to how humans handle risk and uncertainty," said Author Kyle Siler.

"Riskiness may be profitable, especially in higher-stakes games, but it also increases the variance and uncertainty in payoffs. Living one's life, calibrating multiple strategies and managing a bankroll is particularly challenging when enduring wild and erratic swings in short-term luck and results," Siler said.

This finding "coincides with observations in behavioral economics that people overweigh their frequent small gains vis-à-vis occasional large losses, and vice versa," the author explained. Players feel positively reinforced by their streak of wins but have difficulty fully understanding how their occasional large losses offset their gains.

 In online poker the biggest opponent for many players may be themselves, "given the challenges of optimizing one's mindset and strategies, both in the card game and the meta-games of psychology, rationality and socio-economic arbitrage which hover beneath it," Siler said.

The study also found that for small-stakes players, small pairs (from twos to sevens) were actually more valuable than medium pairs (eights through jacks).

"This is because small pairs have a less ambiguous value, and medium pairs are better hands but have more ambiguous values that small-stakes players apparently have trouble understanding," said Siler, a long-time poker player himself.



Citation: Kyle Siler, 'Social and Psychological Challenges of Poker', Journal of Gambling Studies, December 2009; doi:10.1007/s10899-009-9168-2