For this week’s critical play, I decided to play poker, specifically Texas Hold’em. We played with virtual money, but started with individual pots of $5,000, a big blind of $10 and a small blind of $5.
When playing, we noticed that the initial amount of money each player had was probably a bit too high relative to the blinds (the minimum bets) as once people got into the swing of things players were placing $100 to $500 bets because that amount of money felt small relative to the amount we started with.
Poker is particularly interesting because while luck and randomness is a big part of the game, I would argue that skill is also a large factor in how well people play. The basic mechanic of poker is that players start by being dealt 2 cards each. They can choose to call (bet) or fold (surrender). After everyone decides, 3 cards are then revealed in the middle. Players then choose to call, bet (up the bet that everyone else has to match) or fold before another card is revealed. This repeats until there are 5 cards in the center, or if everyone except one person has folded. Then, the person with the highest hand wins. There is randomness present in how cards are dealt out and revealed– being dealt a bad hand can make it hard to win, and vice versa. But even with a “bad” hand, there’s still a chance to win. Because this game is a player vs player game, there’s a certain level of skill involved too– players can learn to bluff, learn how to read other players to see if they’re bluffing, card count, etc. I think this contributes to an aesthetic of challenge for many players, which makes the feeling of winning more satisfying and addictive for many players. This is a slight difference between poker and other gambling games that are pure chance (such as slots or craps)– there’s a sense that you can be “good” at poker, but you can’t really be “good” at slots. Players might feel overconfident about their chances of winning if they’re “good” at poker, even if how the cards were dealt means that their chances of winning are actually much lower. In addition, because poker relies on how other people in the game react, a lot of the non-luck based strategy is based on predicting how other player’s act. Randomness in player behavior, such as with new players who don’t know the game “meta”, leads to phenomena like “beginner’s luck.”
Poker can be particularly addictive– the rush of winning a round and the money that comes with it is an addictive feeling. This is further compounded by the fact that there is an element of skill to poker– things like reading if your opponents are bluffing or card-counting are skills that don’t rely on luck– which means that players can feel like they’re in control of the game, even though luck makes up such a huge component of the game. It’s easy to get caught up in the feeling of winning a huge pot, even if luck is a significant component of that win. During my critical play, one player even complained that “I haven’t won anything recently,” even as he sat with a pot of $10,000 (we started at $5,000 so he had already won a lot). When someone mentioned this, he replied, “I need thrill in my life.” That same player later remarked “Wish we played with money tonight. Actually that’s not true, I jinx myself with money involved.” It’s easy to see how people can get addicted to the thrill of winning, which becomes even more dangerous with real money involved.
