Department of Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
J Gambl Stud. 2010 Sep;26(3):401-20. doi: 10.1007/s10899-009-9168-2.
Poker is a competitive, social game of skill and luck, which presents players with numerous challenging strategic and interpersonal decisions. The adaptation of poker into a game played over the internet provides the unprecedented opportunity to quantitatively analyze extremely large numbers of hands and players. This paper analyzes roughly twenty-seven million hands played online in small-stakes, medium-stakes and high-stakes games. Using PokerTracker software, statistics are generated to (a) gauge the types of strategies utilized by players (i.e. the 'strategic demography') at each level and (b) examine the various payoffs associated with different strategies at varying levels of play. The results show that competitive edges attenuate as one moves up levels, and tight-aggressive strategies--which tend to be the most remunerative--become more prevalent. Further, payoffs for different combinations of cards, varies between levels, showing how strategic payoffs are derived from competitive interactions. Smaller-stakes players also have more difficulty appropriately weighting incentive structures with frequent small gains and occasional large losses. Consequently, the relationship between winning a large proportion of hands and profitability is negative, and is strongest in small-stakes games. These variations reveal a meta-game of rationality and psychology which underlies the card game. Adopting risk-neutrality to maximize expected value, aggression and appropriate mental accounting, are cognitive burdens on players, and underpin the rationality work--reconfiguring of personal preferences and goals--players engage into be competitive, and maximize their winning and profit chances.
扑克是一种具有技巧和运气的竞争性社交游戏，它为玩家提供了许多具有挑战性的战略和人际决策。将扑克改编成在互联网上玩的游戏，提供了前所未有的机会来定量分析大量的牌和玩家。本文分析了大约两千七百万手牌在小额、中等和大额游戏中的在线游戏。使用 PokerTracker 软件，生成了统计数据，以（a）评估每个级别玩家使用的策略类型（即“战略人口统计学”），以及（b）检查不同策略在不同游戏级别下的各种收益。结果表明，随着级别上升，竞争优势会减弱，而紧-激进策略（往往是最有利可图的策略）会变得更加普遍。此外，不同牌型的收益在不同级别之间有所不同，显示了战略收益如何来自竞争互动。低级别玩家也更难以正确权衡奖励结构，因为频繁的小收益和偶尔的大损失。因此，赢得大量手牌和盈利能力之间的关系是负面的，在低级别游戏中最为明显。这些变化揭示了一种理性和心理学的元游戏，这是卡牌游戏的基础。采用风险中性以最大化期望价值、攻击性和适当的心理账户，是玩家的认知负担，是支撑理性工作的基础——重新配置个人偏好和目标——玩家参与竞争，最大化他们的获胜和获利机会。
