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