Online Poker Post-Boom: Sitting at the Virtual Poker Table Ten Years Later

Session Title

Session 3-1-B: Behavioral Analysis

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation

Location

Park MGM, Las Vegas, NV

Start Date

25-5-2023 9:00 AM

End Date

25-5-2023 10:30 AM

Disciplines

Behavioral Economics

Abstract

Technological advancements and worldwide television exposure led to a poker boom in the early 2000s, and LaPlante et al. (2009) published one of the first studies of actual records of online poker play during that early period in online poker. The summary statistics they used to examine gambling activity among a large cohort of poker players informed researchers about how often people played, what stakes they played at, and how much people won and lost. This presentation discusses similar analyses of a more recent dataset (2015 – 2017) with almost 2,500 poker players on a major internet gambling operator. Despite the many shifts in the poker and gambling landscapes, the playing habits of new players on a poker server in 2015 appear to be very similar to the playing habits of a similar cohort back in 2005. This presentation will also cover observations on gambling and poker-specific engagement metrics, deposit and withdrawal activity, the most active players in our cohort, and poker more broadly. To close, we will explore the implications of our findings for individual gamblers, researchers, and operators, and preview future work we have planned for this dataset.

Keywords

Gambling, Internet gambling, Internet poker, Internet, Poker, Epidemiology

Author Bios

Matthew Tom, Ph.D. is an Associate in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a Research Data Analyst at the Division on Addiction, Cambridge Health Alliance. Dr. Tom received his doctorate in statistics from Cornell University in 2003. Dr. Tom's special research interests include the diversity of gambling habits within different player pools, responsible gambling tools and tips, and the distinction between games of pure chance and games of skill and chance.

Funding Sources

Entain PLC (formally GVC Holdings PLC), a sports betting and gambling company, provided primary funding for this study. The Division on Addiction receives additional funding from a variety of federal, state, local, and private sources, as described on https://www.divisiononaddiction.org/funding-statement/.

Competing Interests

All Division on Addiction funders are listed on https://www.divisiononaddiction.org/funding-statement/. The author declares no conflicts of interest.

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May 25th, 9:00 AM May 25th, 10:30 AM

Online Poker Post-Boom: Sitting at the Virtual Poker Table Ten Years Later

Park MGM, Las Vegas, NV

Technological advancements and worldwide television exposure led to a poker boom in the early 2000s, and LaPlante et al. (2009) published one of the first studies of actual records of online poker play during that early period in online poker. The summary statistics they used to examine gambling activity among a large cohort of poker players informed researchers about how often people played, what stakes they played at, and how much people won and lost. This presentation discusses similar analyses of a more recent dataset (2015 – 2017) with almost 2,500 poker players on a major internet gambling operator. Despite the many shifts in the poker and gambling landscapes, the playing habits of new players on a poker server in 2015 appear to be very similar to the playing habits of a similar cohort back in 2005. This presentation will also cover observations on gambling and poker-specific engagement metrics, deposit and withdrawal activity, the most active players in our cohort, and poker more broadly. To close, we will explore the implications of our findings for individual gamblers, researchers, and operators, and preview future work we have planned for this dataset.