For this week’s critical play, I analyzed the game of Texas Hold’em poker, which I played with my team at ASES Marketing + Recruitment (which is a subset of an entrepreneurship club at campus that I co-lead). Poker is a really old game that originated in the early 19th century in the US, which evolved from even older (but similar) European card games. It was initially popular among riverboat gamblers in the Mississippi, but has since become a global phenomenon. Players all the way from even younger than the age of 10 to as-old-as-possible are enjoying poker, but the player demographics skew towards adult males. Today, poker is being played on grand and widely watched stages, like the World Series of Poker (WSOP) where the main event has a $10,000 buy-in and multi-million dollar prizes. People who excel at the game of poker are widely respected and get highly coveted jobs at quant trading firms and executive positions at companies. In this response, I will briefly go over poker’s simple game mechanics and then explain how poker is extremely addictive due to psychological hook that is created by being a blend of skill and chance that differentiates it from other casino games (like slots) and makes it more addictive.
Game Mechanics
Like most long-standing and widely-played game, poker has really simple core mechanics. It can be played with 2-10 players. The objective is to win the most amount of chips. In each round, players receive two individual cards and see up to five table cards. From those seven cards, each player can see what their hand owns up to on this chart, and decide how much they are willing to bet against the others in up to four betting opportunities (pre-flop, flop, turn, and river). The pre-flop is when players see only their two hand cards and the table cards have not been dealt, the flop adds three table cards, the turn adds a fourth, and the river completes the board with a fifth card and is the last opportunity. At each stage, players can bet, call, raise, or fold.
Personal Experience
I organized a poker night with my ASES team alongside my co-lead Dawen. Instead of using a money buy-ins, we played for a couple of prizes (gift cards) and just gave everyone chips. So the game is a net win for everyone). This changed the dynamic of the game because there’s only one victory that you can possibly get. I saw that people were more open to going all-in and playing crazier. They were also more friendly to each other than the typical poker game around Stanford.
One of our members, Quynh, had never played poker before. And because our game was friendly and low-stakes, all of us were down to help her. In fact, often times when one of us folds, we just help her on the sidelines without worrying about whether or not this would affect ourselves (because again we can only win). This experience was completely different from what I see at Ng House at Stanford, where I occasionally watch my dorm mates play poker with each other. I don’t often play because I am not as addicted as my peers there and I am less willing to play games with big buy-ins. They play with $200+ buy-ins, which is above my level (cry). The contrast between these two experiences showed me how the stakes change how people approach the game, both in terms of risk-taking behavior and social dynamics.
The Addiction Potential of Poker
Ultimately, I believe poker has incredibly high addiction potential due to it’s brilliant combination of skill and chance that gives people enough reward to stay hooked and also complements people’s skills and egos upon each win. In “Programming Chance,” Schull talks about how gambling machines extend a player’s engagement through carefully calibrated reward schedules. Poker is similar. The carefully calibrated reward schedule is the chance happening that you have the best hand in a round or a “sun run.” The game is decently chance-based, so even the worst players can win occasionally. What makes poker extra addicting as compared to slots, for example, is that poker also adds a social status dynamic. If you win at poker, people believe that you’re intelligent, extremely masculine, or wealthy. In fact, lots of “high-status” jobs (like quant trading or C-suite positions) like to hire from people who are great at poker. I think this is why at the Ng House, playing poker has become part of people’s personalities. In the “Hobbies” section of our door name tags, lots of people actually put that they really enjoy playing poker. The “Hobbies” section of our door name tag (by the way) has exactly one line, and some people give poker such high important that they include it as a focal point of their identity.
Schull also talks about “calculative script.” In poker players can interpret the outcomes to their advantage, by saying for example, “I’m excellent at poker but got such unfortunate hands” and “I knew it! I read him perfectly.” From this, we can see it’s really easy for players to blame all of their losses on chance and all of their winnings on skill and intelligence and ability. The attribution asymmetry here rewards players regardless of outcome, lessening the lows and heightening the highs. It is brilliant, and plays to human (especially masculine) interests so well, that many people have gotten addicted to it even if they are net losers overall. This buffer taps into how we build confidence, and it ultimately drives a level of engagement that can override the simple binary of win/loss.
Comparison to Other Games of Chance
Other games of chance I would compare poker with are like slots or lottery tickets, which Evans-Thirlwell describes to be “zombie” games. I believe that poker beats slots or lottery tickets in addictiveness because the social and skill-based aspects lure in more investment from the player. Regarding the social aspect, when people play slots, they are playing a game that is them vs. the machine. When they win that game, sure strangers might observe and clap, but the other people in the room are not invested. When people play poker, everyone at the table is invested. If you win, you get the benefit of a boost in ego and confidence. Regarding the skill-based aspect, slots is not really skill-based. Everything is random, and there’s not many things that you can do to improve your chances. With poker on the other hand, you can learn patterns, you can learn statistics, and you can become on net better with time. As people play, they get really invested. Combining these two complex elements makes poker more habit-forming than the other casino games.
Moral Considerations
I believe that it is morally permissible to use chance in games. Like I experienced with playing poker with ASES, randomness created an exciting and unpredictable scenario that allowed people to win something and feel proud of it. And that day we didn’t hurt anyone. We taught Quynn how to play poker and gave away some gift cards to our members who worked hard throughout the year. For those that didn’t win, they got free food! I believe that for poker’s case, when poker is played socially with transparent stakes, it is fair because if it doesn’t work for you, you can not play it.
Regarding gender ethics in games, I wanted to connect poker to what Meg Jayanth says in her “Game Narrative” talk. From my experience, poker tables often reinforce a hyper-masculine ideal: they draw in a more privileged crowd of mostly male and from higher educational backgrounds. And the characteristics of aggression, high-stakes risk-taking, and emotional stoicism are put on a pedestal. But I still think poker is a beautiful game at its core, and there are ways to play it proudly and inclusively right now. The problem is that poker’s current audience isn’t diverse—it sends an unspoken message that only those who fit the “traditional gambler” mold belong. To fix this, we can recruit more diverse competition teams, we can find coaches and players from underrepresented groups (and pay them and put them in the spotlight to win tournaments). Inviting women, nonbinary players, and people of color to co-host beginner-to-advanced nights, featuring a broader range of role models in our promo materials, and partnering with campus cultural groups for low-stakes, judgment-free events will all help signal more inclusivity and that poker tables are for everyone, regardless of gender or background. These are just a couple of suggestions. I really love what Stanford Women in Tech Entrepreneurship is doing next week: hosting a poker night just for girls. As a woman on campus, it makes me really excited to attend, meet many other women and play in a friendlier space.
Thank you!
