Science: What does poker do to your brain? (x post from psychology)

[ckboddic]

First of all, it seems like online poker would have, at least somewhat, a different effect on your brain than live poker would. So maybe it would be good to have some sort of separation between the two. If anyone can point me in the direction of any related scientific articles I would be very grateful.

It's pretty obvious that poker would affect different people in different ways and to different degrees. However, there are going to be a lot of shared "affections" from person to person.

It might help to clarify what actually happens when we sit down to play poker in order to come up with some meaningful things to say about what effect it might have on your brain.

If one was to play online poker they would sit themselves down in front of a computer. Before they even sit down at a table they would (or a good player would) mentally prepare themselves for play. They would open up whatever software they plan to use. Once they are feeling prepared they will open up and sit down at whatever tables they think are going to show a profit. They will open up as many tables as they like. Most would wait for the blinds and start playing as soon as the blinds come around. They would start playing at some tables before others if they are multitabling as the blinds would come around faster on some tables than on others. Eventually they would be playing on all tables and now they are good to go. They might move to other tables, add more tables, take away tables, as they feel like. What tables to add or drop would take some thinking. Generally, though, there comes a point when you are more settled than earlier as you put in a few more hands and become more comfortable/settled with the tables you are at. Now you make poker decisions. Constantly. You observe what happens when you are not involved in a hand as much as possible. When you are involved in a hand or hands you try to formulate the best way to play them. You adapt to your opponents, constantly. Depending on how many tables you are playing your mind is often making three or four separate decisions at once, often, while observing other things as well. These specific decisions would end as the hand ends, but, there will always be more as long as you are sitting at a table or tables. You might think about situations you have been involved in months or years ago while trying to come up with the best way to play a current hand. If you just lost a big pot you could be thinking about how you played it for some time after the hand has ended, then forget about it for a few minutes, then think about it again, and so on. Your mood will come and go in spurts. You could be bored after an hour of nothing exciting and then very excited or heated the next minute after playing a large, interesting pot. This will likely have some effect on your play. Your wrist could hurt and that could carry over into your play. You might take a break and come back re-energized and repeat the whole process once again. So what happens to the mind, that tries to think and focus, that is constantly barraged with difficult or easy or medium decisions and sometimes not? Poker requires endurance, mentally. It also requires thought in different amounts. Information has to be processed. What happens to the brain that is forced to look at a computer monitor for hours on end?

I suppose live poker would be very similar except a bit more boring (if you're not conversing with anybody) since there are less hands and less decisions to be made. Your brain would not constantly be barraged with decisions but instead have to make individual decisions as they come.

What effect does poker have on your brain?