This week, I played an online poker game on 247freepoker.com. Poker is a traditional card game with historical roots in games like the French Poque and the Iranian As-Nas.
Randomness & Addictive
The core mechanic that defines poker—randomly dealt cards—generates an intense level of uncertainty. Rational players might try to calculate their win probabilities using mathematical models, but in practice, most people do not play this way consistently. More often, randomness leads players to chase emotional highs, interpret losses as bad luck, and wins as signs of skill. These patterns are not just anecdotal—they align closely with what psychologists call “variable-ratio reinforcement,” a type of reward schedule famously found to be highly addictive. Like lab mice pressing a lever in hopes of an unpredictable reward, poker players are drawn back in by the uncertainty of the next hand.
One of the most compelling and dangerous hooks poker offers is the near-miss. Losing by just one card or folding only to realize your discarded hand could have won often activates the brain’s reward systems almost as strongly as a win. These near-victories create a “not-yet” feeling—players believe that if they just keep going, success is inevitable. When wins do come, especially in short streaks, the illusion of a hot hand takes over. Players begin to believe they are on a lucky run and may bet more aggressively, interpreting randomness as a personal streak rather than a statistical blip. This perceived control over chance outcomes fuels overconfidence and riskier decision-making, even when the cards remain as random as ever.
The danger intensifies in the online format. Offline poker, played with friends or strangers in person, often carries additional layers of social interaction—reading facial cues, bluffing in real time, sharing laughs or frustration. These human elements can temper the purely mechanical draw of the game. In contrast, online poker strips away much of the social experience, shifting players’ focus entirely to the game mechanics. The result is an environment where people engage more intensely with the addictive elements of the game. Even more troubling is the presence of AI-controlled agents and algorithmic card distribution, which opens the door to subtle manipulations. Platforms can, in theory, adjust the difficulty dynamically to keep users playing, offering better cards after a string of losses to rekindle hope, or making the game harder after consistent wins to introduce frustration and reset engagement loops. These patterns mirror the manipulative balancing used in some live-service games that, while technically “alive,” are better described as the “living dead”—sustained by thin content and emotional manipulation rather than dynamic design.
Our natural tendency to see patterns where none exist further complicates things. Poker players, like many humans, are wired to find meaning in randomness. They might come to believe that certain seats, avatars, or bet patterns are “luckier,” reinforcing a false sense of control. This illusion pushes them deeper into the game, convinced they can outsmart randomness. Every time a perceived strategy works, it reinforces the belief, and every time it fails, it’s excused as an exception. Combined with monetization mechanisms like optional buy-ins or in-game currencies, this system becomes a perfect storm for compulsive engagement. The game constantly offers opportunities to “buy back in” and chase losses, blurring the line between persistence and entrapment.
Comparing Poker to Other Chance-Based Games
Compared to other games that incorporate chance, poker occupies a far more dangerous space. Games like Balatro also use card mechanics and randomness, but in ways that empower creativity and mastery. Its engagement comes from experimenting with builds and uncovering synergies, not from trying to recover a lost bet. Similarly, Pokémon includes many randomized systems, like catching creatures or damage variance, but these are embedded in narrative progression and personal exploration. There are no real losses, and the randomness helps build emergent stories rather than compulsive loops. Even Blackjack, which shares poker’s casino lineage, tends to have clearer odds and less psychological ambiguity, though it still poses similar risks.
From an ethical design perspective, the use of chance is permissible when it opens up creative possibilities, supports varied outcomes, and allows players to step away without real loss. When randomness is used transparently to enhance discovery or tension, it can be an enriching part of the game experience. But when it is tied to monetization, masked in illusions of control, or used to manipulate behavior through streaks and near-misses, it becomes ethically problematic. In the case of online poker, especially in its more automated and isolated forms, randomness often shifts from being a mechanic to becoming a hook that risks pulling players deeper into cycles of loss, illusion, and compulsion.
