Poker Press Release

Survey:
Most are Aggressive
against a Lucky Player
By Rachel Croson, Ph.D

Between May 10-20th, members of PokerSchool Online volunteered to take a Poker Survey conducted by professors from Wharton and UCSB. The Survey asked School Members how they would play against a lucky poker player and an average poker player. The following article is a summary of the survey's results, written by Associate Professor Rachel Croson of The Wharton School.

Thank you for participating in the Poker Pages survey. I have included the statistical results for the interested parties along with some websites to read if you want to further explore this topic.

This survey was designed to investigate the impact of someone at your table being "on a rush." In the survey we described another player at your table as having been either extremely lucky or having average luck. We then told you what he had done, what cards you had, and asked for your estimate of his card strength, your likely response to his actions, and the overall strength of your hand versus his.

Some of you were asked these questions against the lucky player first, others against the average player first, but there were no significant order effects so we have pooled this data.

There were two competing hypotheses--the first that poker players would be less aggressive against a lucky player and the second that they would be more aggressive. Your data overwhelmingly supported the second hypothesis.

In both the cases (other player calls, you have KJo and other player raises, you have 88), you estimated that the lucky player's cards were significantly worse than the average player's cards.

You were also more likely to raise (or re-raise) against the lucky player than against the average player (significant for the second case, marginally for the first), and you believed you were significantly more likely to win against the lucky player than against the average player.

Here's the average numbers and statistical significance levels for those who are interested:

Mr A/L calls, you have KJo:	Average	Lucky	Significance
his card strength 1=trash 7=premium	4.55	3.78	0.00
you fold 1=unlikely 7=certain	3.91	3.87	0.94
you call 1=unlikely 7=certain	4.09	4.04	0.87
you raise 1=unlikely 7=certain	2.01	2.40	0.12
whose hand stronger 1=him 7=you	3.96	4.34	0.06
Mr A/L raises, you have 88:	Average	Lucky	Significance
his card strength 1=trash 7=premium	5.87	5.20	0.00
you fold 1=unlikely 7=certain	4.36	3.80	0.05
you call 1=unlikely 7=certain	3.87	3.86	0.97
you re-raise 1=unlikely 7=certain	2.46	3.07	0.02
whose hand stronger 1=him 7=you	3.32	4.18	0.00

Our third question asked about what an average poker player would think/do in these situations. Your responses were again consistent, that an average poker player would believe the lucky player had worse cards than the average player (on a scale of 1-7 where 4 means their card strengths are equal, those averages are 3.40, significantly different from 4 at p<.01 when A/L called and 3.149, significantly different from 4 at p<.01 when A/L raised).

The final questions were from a standard psychological scale called locus of control. Locus of control is a personality construct that describes an individual's perception of the causality of events, either internally based on his own behavior or externally based on fate or luck. For an overview of locus of control see http://miavx1.muohio.edu/~psybersite/control/overview.htx

Previous research has demonstrated that internal locus-of-control types tend to gamble at games of skill like poker while external types tend to gamble at games of luck like slot machines (Lester 1980, Psychological Reports, vol 47, p. 22). A superficial description of this research can be found at http://miavx1.muohio.edu/~psybersite/control/gambling.htx

As expected, this group scored as high internals on the locus-of-control scale. The average person was at the 77th percentile as compared with the general population.

We concluded with some demographic questions. The survey was completed by 89 PokerSchool Online Members. Of these, 76 were male, 12 were female and 1 did not indicate their gender. The average age is 39 (standard deviation = 11).

Respondents spend on average 18.16 hours per week playing poker and only 30 minutes per week gambling at other activities. We asked for a self-rating of your poker skill--the average was 3.66 on a 1-7 scale where 1 is a raw beginner and 7 is an expert.

Finally, the winners of the random drawing for two 50 Sponsorship Point prizes amongst Survey takers were aha12877 and dreams32097. Congratulations!

Thank you again for your participation in this survey. Please feel free to contact me if I can answer any questions or provide any additional information about this or other research.

Sincerely yours,

Rachel Croson
Associate Professor
The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6366
crosonr@wharton.upenn.edu