Pokernomics

[jim leach]

Some of you may know who Steven Levitt is, but for those who do not, he is the author of the NYT bestseller, FREAKONOMICS: A ROGUE ECONOMIST UNCOVERS THE HIDDEN SIDE OF EVERYTHING. Dr. Levitt is a full professor of economics at the University of Chicago and the recipient of the John Bates Clark Award (which is given every two years by the AEA to the "best" economist under the age of 40). Dr. Levitt's area of expertise is "corruption, cheating and crime" and has published on everything from the effect of legalized abortion on crime, to sumo wrestling corruption, to cheating among high school teachers during high stakes exams.

Levitt is now doing research on poker - specificaly on what makes a good poker player, and is soliciting the poker community for data. Here is the post on his webpage. I'll post a second post after this one explaining what you get out of submitting your data to him. I highly recommend interested parties to contact him, not only for how it could benefit him, but you'd be working with a brilliant social scientist on something the poker community cares about.

The Freakonomics of Poker
I'm starting a research project on poker, with the goal of understanding what makes a person a good or bad poker player.

I couldn't find the kind of data I needed, so I am assembling my own data set. What I'm looking for are online poker players who have been tracking their hands using Poker Tracker software.

I've set up a website for people who are interested in contributing their own poker hands to the database. It is http://www.pokernomics.com/. It gives you all the details.

You are probably thinking to yourself, "what is in it for me?" First, you will be advancing science (or whatever it is you call my research). Second, we will analyze your data and hopefully give you some ideas about how to be a better poker player. Third, while supplies last, we are giving out Freakonomics t-shirts and signed copies of the book to people who provide us with big hand histories.

Rest assured, we will handle the data with great care. We will not give or sell your data to anyone else. Nearly forty players have already contributed more than two million hands to me.

So please, poker players of the world unite, http://www.pokernomics.com/needs you.

http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/07/...-of-poker.html

[jim leach]

http://www.pokernomics.com/

Understanding Successful Poker Play
How much more succesful can a player be if he knows the odds? What are the best betting strategies for getting the most money out of a winning hand? Are there simple betting strategies that can be used to win money even with losing hands? To what extent does position from the button and position relative to other players matter? Does having a big stack of chips allow a player to bully others and win more of their money? Do people lose big after winning a big hand, or does success follow success? These are some of the many questions we would like to answer.

Our goal is to understand the factors that make players succesful at poker. Many people have written books on poker theory, but there has yet to be a systematic analysis using actual data on what works and what doesn't. University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt hopes to change this and perform the first large scale analysis of poker.

How are we going to do this?
Every day, over 187 million dollars are wagered at online poker tables by over 2 million players worldwide. Recently, companies such as Poker Tracker have made keeping records of one's own play extremely easy. Individuals can now store tens of thousands, even millions of their own hands on their computers almost effortlessly. We at pokernomics.com are requesting that people send us their hand histories for analysis. We are particularly interested in analyzing the game of Texas Hold'em due to its immense popularity in the world of online poker. With the right dataset, we are confident that we can answer the questions above and many more.

What's in it for you?
Everyone who sends in at least 10,000 of their own hands will receive a free analysis of his or her poker play. We will identify the strategies you use that earn you the most money and will pinpoint your frequent mistakes that cause you to lose or prevent you from making as much money as you could have. We will tell you which starting hands you play best/worst. We can even tell you if you earn more or less at different times of the day, at tables with different stakes, or against certain kinds of opponents.

In addition, players who send in over 30,000 hands will get an autographed copy of Steven Levitt's book Freakonomics delivered to them. Players who send more than 50,000 hands will receive both an autographed copy of Freakonomics and a free freakonomics t-shirt.

[kitaristi0]

That sounds quite interesting. I'd definitely want to read what he has to say (i'm guessing he's writing a book about it).

[jim leach]

Yes, please check it out and seriously, tell others. You might want to check out Levitt's book, too, just to get a sense of how he'll probably use the data.

It probably won't be a book that he'll publish. Economics doesn't reward book writing very much (his recent book is really his old articles rewritten for a popular audience; nothing original in it, from the point of science, though it's a great read). He's very prolific and publishes mostly articles in top journals. The thing that he appears to be doing with this data is, in part, finding out what constitutes a good player. That is, I think looking at actual person characteristics. Does it vary with a person's education? With their training in certain things like mathematics or statistics? Does it vary with race, age or sex? Does it depend on the time of day they're playing? He's mainly known for his creative questions, and then also, finding the right data (and lastly, coming up with the right econometric techniques to overcome problems inherent in the question he's asking), so I think he's planning something very cool.

I'm kind of a fanboy when it comes to the guy, but it's not difficult to be when you're in grad school and your research area overlaps with his.

[chrisg]

THIS IS OBVIOUSLY A CON. HOW ABOUT YOU [censored] RIGHT OFF?

[J.R.]

chrisg = dumb

[shermn27]

Although I think the project itself is a great idea, I must admit that I am a little skeptical. Do we really want a book floating around that analytically tells people how to play better? Personally, I prefer it if everyone else doesn't know how to play better.

And yes I recognize that many people will point out that ToP and HPAP are already available to make people better, but nonetheless, I would rather not conribute to someone who is going to point out the flaws in bad players and teach them how to play better.

Am I alone on this issue?

[J.R.]

even assuming he writes a book and not a journal article, the audience of the book and the class of people you worry abotu improving don't really overlap. if anything, your concerns are more validly adressed to 2+2 rather than this project.

[Rudbaeck]

I was so exalted over Pokernomics I posted in Books without searching first. (I know, a cardinal sin on any message board. Mea culpa!) Glad to see you found the 2+2 community.

I emailed support@pokernomics.com some suggestions on where to score bazillions of hand histories, as well as a database of my own.

[sexypanda]

Sorry I can't help you out with this one, my computer bluescreen a few weeks ago and took all my hand histories with it. But, this seems like a very interesting study and I hope you can let us know when he has published his work, I'd love to read it.