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

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I would love to see the results of a test where they hook people up to electrodes and see what part of the brain is active during an activity.

I'm guessing that winning and losing players would activate totally different areas, with losers being far more emotionally driven.

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That would certainly be interesting. Kind of like that show where they hooked poker players up to a machine to measure their adrenaline level while they were playing. I saw it on tv. I think it wasn't big name pros just people who'd won their way on to tv thru freerolls.

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It's my impression that online players suffer more from tilt than live ones. It may be a faulty impression or it may have something to do with the environment in which the person is playing in. I hardly ever hear live players mention tilt while online players seem really preoccupied with it.

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More likely it has to do with the fact online players see many more hands per hour, especially multitablers, so getting your money in good and having negative results happen multiple times hourly, where a live player might only see that once in a live session.

Although there may be long-term enviromental effects, especially if the player doesn't focus on things other than poker.

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What effect does poker have on your brain?

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It's a mixed effect. You learn to analyze situations on the fly until they become second nature, etc. at a rather fast pace.

Burn-out and emotional effects are certainly part of the package for an online player. I had a month where I played nearly 115k hands and the effects of that were less than desirable. I'm playing far less hands now as a result of that.

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Definitely the hand volume has a big psychological influence on your game particularly in the burnout area. The funny thing about online play though is I think it can be very insidious in undermining your "A" game which in turn will affect your win rate. Since nobody can see you and you don't have as much of the ego factor buttressing your actions as you do live its very easy to succumb to the temptation to make a lot of untried experimental plays. All the experimental play has an upside because then you really know the intricacies of the game but if you're an action junkie it could become a severe leak. Gotta love poker. You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]