Poker Players Research Articles

Poker in light of the Gambling Act and European Union regulations

The authors of the paper undertook an analysis of the regulations on the organization of a poker game under the Gambling Act. The main subject of the analysis revolves around the question to what extent state authorities should monitor and restrict the activity of poker players. The scope of the statutory restrictions on arranging and participating in poker games depends on the culture of perception of gambling in a given country. Assigning poker to the appropriate regulatory category, either as a gambling activity carrying the highest social risks in terms of public health or safety, or as a game primarily for entertainment, is by no means obvious and depends on determining such factors as the purpose of organizing the poker game and the manner in which it is played, i.e. whether players are playing against a casino or against each other. The regulatory differentiation depending on the variety of poker games is the result of years of efforts by national legislators and the jurisprudence to define and categorize the game correctly. The article cites the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court justifying the formal and material prerequisites of the existing restrictions on the gambling services market. The authors also relied on the extensive body of case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union explicating the permissibility of restrictions on freedom of establishment and freedom to provide services in the sphere of gambling. The conclusions drawn from these reflections confirm that the current provisions of the Polish Gambling Act are part of a consistent and systematic state policy aimed at ensuring the highest possible level of consumer protection, and the introduced restrictions are proportionate and necessary.

Tilt in esports: Understanding the phenomenon in new digital contexts

Tilt is a state of frustration leading to poor performance in poker players, but despite widespread adoption of the term in the gaming community, nascent esports (electronic sports) research has yet to establish a definition of tilt. The rapid growth of the esports industry has sparked demand for research that expands knowledge on psychological factors in gaming, especially the application of performance-oriented improvements for competitive gamers. Our qualitative approach explored the construct of tilt and how it manifests in esports, including generating the first clear definition of tilt as it applies to this context. Thematic analysis of interviews with six industry experts defined tilt as a state of indignation and frustration resulting in inhibited decision-making, as well as identifying several esports-specific contexts that trigger or mitigate tilt. Themes diverge noticeably from the problem gambling contexts in which tilt definitions originated, answering the recent call for more context-specific athlete-orientated research. Our findings provide the first definition of tilt bespoke to esports and marks an important conceptual foundation for this emerging research area. The definition will also inform evidence-based practice as coaches and psychologists search for new ways to improve athlete performance in the highly competitive world of esports.

Impact of online poker gambling on behavioural and neurophysiological responses to a virtual gambling task.

Online poker gambling (OPG) involves various executive control processes and emotion regulation. In this context, we hypothesized that online poker players, accustomed to handling virtual cards, would show high performance on computerized decision-making tasks such as the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). Using press advertisements, we recruited a non-gambler group (NG; n= 20) and an OPG group (n= 22). All participants performed the IGT while their cerebral activity was recorded by electroencephalography. Compared with the OPG group, the NG group showed significantly better progression in the IGT in the last trials. Recording of brain activity revealed the appearance of a temporal map between 150 and 175 ms specific to the gain condition in both groups. A second map was observed at 215-295 ms specifically in the NG group, and the generators were identified in the occipital regions. This activity is indicative of a high level of visual awareness; thus, it reflects additional processing of visual information, which can be assumed to be induced by the lower exposure of the NGs to online card games. We hypothesize that the absence of this activity in the OPG group might be due to their online habituation to virtual environments.

Gambling as Work: A Study of German Poker Players

The study addresses the question whether professional gamblers can be considered an occupational group from a sociological perspective. It combines survey data on poker players from the German state North Rhine-Westphalia with sociological theory in order to explain the oxymoron of professional gambling. The descriptive analysis of the survey data is supplemented by ego-centric network data of the poker players to analyze whether hobby and professional players maintain different forms of social relationships. Even when semiprofessionals and professional players are grouped together for the purpose of comparative analysis, they fulfill the criteria of occupational groups according to Salaman’s major work on the topic. The study points to the fact that more research on occupational groups outside of the common fields is needed and bridges the gap between the literature on serious leisure and sociological research on professions and professionalization.

The influence of football celebrity endorsements on the attention paid to advertising: eye tracker research related to amateur online poker players in Portugal

ABSTRACT The aim of this research is to determine how football stars influence the attention paid to online poker advertising and whether a corresponding nationality might influence the perception of audiences between 18 and 24 years of age, which is the adult age group most vulnerable to this type of game. Using an eye tracking technique, a sample of 60 Portuguese young people who are amateur online poker players has been studied. The results suggest that affinity with a sports star increases the level of attention paid to the image of the star. Otherwise, the poker hand registers the greatest amount of attention. Sports stars who are currently playing attract more attention than those who are retired, and smiles make it possible to attract even more attention from the audience. These stars facilitate advertising brands in associating online gaming with a form of leisure.

Having a Positive Attitude or Doing Good Deeds? An Experimental Investigation of Poker Players’ Responses to the Gambling Fallacies Measure

Gambling fallacies are irrational beliefs about how gambling works, which are common among disordered gamblers, and measured by questionnaires such as the Gambling Fallacies Measure (GFM). Less is known about the potentially rational cognitions of some skilled gamblers, such as professional poker players. The present research experimentally manipulated item 5 from the GFM, “A positive attitude or doing good deeds increases your likelihood of winning money when gambling”, by comparing two new versions focusing only on a “positive attitude” or “doing good deeds” to the original version (control). Item 5 is scored so that “disagree” is the non-fallacious correct answer, but it was hypothesized that the words “a positive attitude” might increase rates of poker players selecting “agree” in a non-fallacious manner. Online experiments were conducted on samples of professional poker players (N = 379), and a broad sample of poker players with no inclusion criteria (N = 1,510). Participants’ responses to item 5 were associated with the rest of their GFM scores (GFM-9). Participants in both samples were more likely to disagree with the good deeds version, and less likely to disagree with the positive attitude version, compared to control. In comparison to the other conditions, good deeds responses were most strongly associated with GFM-9 scores among professionals, while positive attitude responses were least strongly associated with GFM-9 scores among the broad sample. The good deeds version of item 5 has advantageous measurement properties among professional poker players. New approaches are needed to better understand the potentially rational cognitions of skilled gamblers.

“It Always Depends on the Context”

While it is well recognized that gambling behaviours are shaped by the contexts in which they occur, less research has investigated the relationship between poker and substance use (i.e., alcohol and other drugs). The current study explores poker players’ perceptions of the relationship between substance use and gambling. This qualitative descriptive study is a secondary data analysis of 25 interviews with poker players conducted as part of a broader prospective cohort project. From the thematic analysis, players described how specific contextual factors, such as social setting and location (e.g., bars, casinos) influenced their substance use. Poker players reported a relationship between substance use and gambling practices. However, players differed greatly in their decisions about whether, and how much, to use alcohol and other drugs, with individuals’ choices depending heavily on contexts (e.g., more inclined to partake when alcohol was available) and motivations (e.g., remaining sober to remain sharp and not impair their intellectual capacity). For those players who considered poker earnings to be their main source of income, increased use of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis were reported as a way of dealing with stress, anxiety and a lack of motivation related to their play.

Spatial attention to social information in poker: A neuropsychological study using the Posner cueing paradigm.

This research aimed to characterize social information processing abilities in a population of regular nondisordered poker players compared to controls. Participants completed the Posner cueing paradigm task including social cues (faces) to assess attention allocation towards social stimuli, including the effect of the presentation time (subliminal vs supraliminal) and of the emotion displayed. The study included two groups of participants: 30 regular nondisordered poker players (those who played at least three times a week in Texas Hold'em poker games for at least three months) and 30 control participants (those who did not gamble or gambled less than once a month, whatever the game). The group of regular nondisordered poker players displayed anenhancement of the inhibition of return during the Posner cueing task. This means that in valid trials, they took longer to respond to the already processed localization in supraliminal conditions compared to controls. However, our results did not evidence any particular engagement or disengagement attention abilities toward specific types of emotion. These results suggest that regular nondisordered poker players displayed social information processing abilities, which may be due to the importance to efficiently process social information that can serve as tells in live poker. The observed enhancement of the inhibition of return may permit poker players to not process a localization that has already processed to save attentional resources. Further research regarding the establishment of the IOR in other forms of gambling and with non-social cues needs to be performed.

What Can Managers Learn From Professional Poker Players About Decision-Making?

This paper aims to investigate how past decision-making experiences can improve future decision-making. Nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with profitable professional Poker players. The results point out that it is the knowledge background of the decision-maker that makes him make sense of the situations he experiences. The research findings allowed the identification of three mechanisms that facilitate and make future decisions faster and more appropriate based on past experiences: (1) memory, (2) reflection, and (3) tools and analytical approach. The research contributes by showing evidence that, when supported by analytical tools, decision-makers can improve the quality and speed of the decision-making process. For organizations and supply chains, the paper highlights the importance of recognizing patterns based on the past to make sense of the future. For operations management, in events like COVID-19, companies can take advantage of memory to enact over unprecedented scenarios, prevent disruptions, and recover.

Elite professional online poker players: factors underlying success in a gambling game usually associated with financial loss and harm

Most gamblers lose money, and this means that a behavioral dependence to gambling can cause harm. However, some professional gamblers win consistently, and there is little academic literature on their psychology and how they differ from disordered gamblers. To contribute to this understudied area, we qualitatively analyzed interviews with 19 elite online professional poker players, by examining factors from the disordered gambling and decision-making literatures. Like disordered gamblers, participants displayed aspects of a behavioral dependence to gambling, but contrastingly did not generally experience harm. Other contrasts included their rational approach to statistical thinking, a general self-reported tendency to not be impulsive, and their social connections with other experts. One factor that did not yield clear contrasting results was whether or not they experienced early big wins. Parallels with the decision-making literature included their assessment of decision quality based on expected value rather than realized outcomes, their reluctance to take risks outside of their ‘circle of competence,’ and their ‘active open-minded’ thinking style. This study contributes to gambling psychology via an in-depth exploration of an understudied group.

Consumer preferences for network liquidity and opponent quality in online poker

ABSTRACT Several online gambling platforms use marketplace business models where the operator facilitates wagers between players instead of directly banking games. There is a large theoretical literature on marketplace business models, but there is little empirical evidence that suggests how it may apply to gambler preferences or behavior. This study contributes to the understanding of consumers in gambling markets by testing multi-sided market theory in online poker. Using data collected from a diverse sample of online poker players (n = 719), this study empirically demonstrates how players value game availability and product quality. Our results show evidence of diminishing marginal returns to scale and benefits from product differentiation across a range of conditions found in the market. Consumers prefer that operators grow their networks when size is sufficiently small but would prefer more focus on the types of players added to games as the network grows. From a policy perspective, these findings provide support for using multi-sided market theory as a framework for taxation and licensure in gambling products.

Skilled poker players provide more accurate responses than amateur poker players to the Gambling Fallacies Measure

Skilled poker players provide more accurate responses than amateur poker players to the Gambling Fallacies Measure

INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGIES IN AGRO-INDUSTRY COMPLEX IN THE WORLD

Most of the results achieved using AI technologies are superior to humans: in 1997, a computer beat the then world chess champion, and more recently, in 2016, other computers beat the world's best go and poker players. Computers prove or help prove mathematical theorems; knowledge is generated automatically, based on machine learning methods, and with the help of large data sets, the size of which is calculated in terabytes (from the 10th to the 12th power) and even petabytes (to the 10th to the 15th power).

Poker in Virtual Reality

This study examines virtual reality (VR) poker and how the platform affects poker players' experience. Players use a self-customized avatar and other features of a computer platform that differs from in-person poker. Data were collected through observations from in-game poker VR recordings and interviews with five professional poker players. Findings are analysed theoretically through proteus effects, social presence, ecological psychology, magic circle, and liminality. This demonstrates the interactive cues that poker players use when immersed in virtual reality and embodied in a digital avatar. The goals from this research are to learn about the influence avatars have on poker players: if players can still maintain their poker skills and read different cue signs from other players while embodied in an avatar and immersed in VR. This paper also explores the promise of poker in virtual reality and its environment, examples of existing applications, a discussion of the research to date, and also provides a vision for the future.

Problem Gambling Poker Players: Do They Fit into Blaszczynski and Nower's Pathways Model?

Blaszczynski and Nower's (Addiction 97:487-499, 2002) Pathways Model, an integrative model based on problem gamblers' paths and comorbidities, aids in understanding the heterogeneity of problem gamblers' profiles by classifying them into three subgroups. The profiles of problem gamblers may be linked to the type of gambling practiced. Poker is a popular game, primarily due to the involvement of both chance and strategy in its outcome. However, no study has attempted to fit poker players into the Pathways Model. We recruited an online sample of 245 regular poker players (including 146 non-problem gamblers, 83 problem-gambling poker players, and 16 probable pathological gamblers). We assessed multiple variables (impulsivity, sensation seeking, alcohol and tobacco consumption, anxiety, depression, cognitive distortions) from the Pathways Model to determine whether the profiles of poker players fit into one or more gambler subgroups. Cluster analysis showed that poker players had a unique profile with a gambling practice intensity gradient. Compared to non-problem gamblers, problem gamblers displayed significantly higher levels of depression, impulsivity, gambling-related cognitive distortions, and alcohol consumption. Our results suggest that problem-gambling poker players fit into Blaszczynski and Nower's behaviorally conditioned gamblersgroup. This study opens avenues for both research into and treatment for problem gambling among poker players.

Pocket Queens

Approaches from the humanities that understand poker as a culture (rather than as a gambling pathology or an isolated gaming activity) can help to highlight the voices and stories of women and connect them to feminist and gender research. Stories by individual women who may or may not be feminists can be most usefully described as “perifeminist,” a description of the strategies to cope with sexism that do not necessarily involve either confrontation or negation. Understanding women’s poker stories within this framework can bring depth and breadth to the representation of female poker players in popular journalism, which generally characterizes female players as objects or accessories for male players. In this article, I analyze the gender politics of memoirs by Annie Duke and Victoria Coren, prominent female players whose texts are widely read, because these memoirs are a good place to look for perifeminist strategies and a sense of what being part of poker culture involves for women. Looking for and noticing the stories of female players and contextualizing them as part of the everyday experiences of gender politics can do much to make the lives of poker playing women more visible, and worthy of critical attention.

Erroneous Beliefs Verbalized While Playing Online Poker

The objective of this study was to compare erroneous beliefs of online Texas Hold’em poker players with different level of severity of problems, in situations that could cause negative emotions. Verbalizations of three groups of gamblers (low-risk, n=10; at-risk, n=10 and problem, n=10) while playing an online poker tournament in a laboratory setting. Participants were not aware that they played against research assistants and that all cards received were predetermined and the same for all participants. Beliefs related to the illusion of control were found in the three groups of gamblers. At-risk and problem gamblers’ perceptions denote a greater influence given to their ability on the game results, with even a denial of the part played by chance. Poker-specific beliefs, different from those usually held by game-of-chance gamblers, were also found. These results are discussed to provide ideas in how to adapt erroneous perceptions questionnaires for online poker players.

Clarifying the relationship between coherence and accuracy in probability judgments

Bayesian approaches presuppose that following the coherence conditions of probability theory makes probabilistic judgments more accurate. But other influential theories claim accurate judgments (with high “ecological rationality”) do not need to be coherent. Empirical results support these latter theories, threatening Bayesian models of intelligence; and suggesting, moreover, that “heuristics and biases” research, which focuses on violations of coherence, is largely irrelevant. We carry out a higher-power experiment involving poker probability judgments (and a formally analogous urn task), with groups of poker novices, occasional poker players, and poker experts, finding a positive relationship between coherence and accuracy both between groups and across individuals. Both the positive relationship in our data, and past null results, are captured by a sample-based Bayesian approximation model, where a person's accuracy and coherence both increase with the number of samples drawn. Thus, we reconcile the theoretical link between accuracy and coherence with apparently negative empirical results.

Why Women are not in The Live Poker Room and The Evidence on How This Could Change

A disproportional number of women who play poker can be found in the live poker room. Despite the interest of casinos to draw more women to poker, the strategies implemented to increase interest and participation in poker tournaments for women has not improved turnout. This is the second phase of an exploratory study to examine industry barriers for women in poker. A survey was administered in which 309 poker players were questioned as to their poker habits, 35% female, 55% male. This study reveals key findings that are statistically significant as women have key factors that vary their experiences to men, which has little coverage in previous academic studies. Key findings include; (1) Women are more likely to play tournament style games that range from $100-$499 buy in levels than men, (2) Women are more likely to experience intimidation in the live poker room and of all poker players who experience negative experiences (intimidation, bullying, theft, etc.), women are more likely to feel the issue was NOT resolved to their satisfaction. This secondary study furthers the initial exploratory study and will provide implications for growth to this key segment of the $40 billion-dollar industry.

Auto-encoder neural network based prediction of Texas poker opponent's behavior

Imperfect information game is the difficulty in the game field. In the study of imperfect information games, an accurate and effective opponent modeling method is essential. Texas Hold 'em is a typical game with imperfect information. The main form of opponent modeling is to predict the opponent's behavior. This article takes Texas Hold 'em as the specific research object and proposes an opponent's behavior prediction method based on an auto-encoding neural network. We use the International Computer Poker Tournament historical data as experimental data to model Texas Hold 'em poker players' behavior and train an auto-encoding neural network model that can be applied to different stages of the game. In the article, the auto-encoding network model's structure and parameters are experimentally studied, and the quantized conjugate gradient convergence algorithm (SCG) and softmax classifier are used. Experimental test results show that this method can accurately predict the opponent's behavior information in a short time, which will provide precious help for the decision-making of the Texas Hold 'em agent.