Good News for Poker

Poker has been getting some largely positive publicity in the mainstream media lately thanks to Professor Nesson and the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society. First came a New York Times article entitled “High Stakes Poker as a Learning Tool.” Then came the Economist with its article, “A Big Deal“:

“The skill, Mr Lederer argues, is in the betting. And it is apparent in the fact that you can win without the best hand. More than half of all hands end without the cards being shown, not because one player got lucky but because he managed to persuade the others, given their analysis of the available information and the size of the pot, that it was sensible to fold. When no one declares their hand, can it really be argued that the outcome was determined by luck?

At the highest level, decisions about betting, bluffing and folding are based on the complex juggling of probabilities. “What drew me to poker is that it is essentially an academic endeavour,” says Ms Duke. She is one of a growing group of full-time players who came to poker through game theory and mathematics, not through any love of a flutter. (Indeed, she never plays craps or roulette.) Others include Mr Lederer (her brother) and Mr Ferguson, who has a doctorate in computer science and writes academic papers on probability theory with his father, a statistician at UCLA.

Thomas Bihl, winner of a recent HORSE tournament, in which players have to show mastery of five different styles of poker, thinks the game has more in common with finance than it does with basic forms of gambling, because it requires the constant pricing and repricing of risk. Mr Bihl, a former stock trader, says the move from his old job into poker was a natural progression. Though his £71,000 win was “a huge lift”, he says that he is motivated not by money but by the chance to use his brain to outfox opponents. This is a common refrain among regular players. As Ms Coren put it in a recent article: “Cash is nothing more than chips, just the tools of the trade, like fishing rods to an angler. The game is all about money, and nothing to do with money.””

As this passage illustrates, both articles give voice to the arguments in favor of skill’s predominance over chance in poker and make only passing mention of the arguments to the contrary. The Economist article even casts last year’s legislation in a negative light, referring to “a law last year, sneakily tacked on to a port-security bill, which sought to bolster existing legislation against internet wagering by blocking Americans’ access to accounts that can be used to gamble online.”

Nice work, GPSTS!