(Permission for this thread was granted by Mason Malmuth)

Hey everyone,

I am a graduate psychology student conducting an internet-based research study on poker players’ emotion regulation strategies and mental health. I would greatly appreciate it if you could take some time and respond to the online survey linked below.

https://goo.gl/forms/jMakN8WwUd85wJoC2

Being a former professional poker player myself (~2M hands lifetime, mainly at 2/4 to 25/50 NL between 2006 and 2011 – these days I’m mostly splashing around the “safe” waters of .25/.50 PLO playing part-time), I was always curious to learn more about how fellow players deal with their emotions both on and off the tables. From my own experience, I have come to understand that playing poker full time leads to the adoption of a pretty unique lifestyle; one of great advantages in terms of freedom and, potentially, financial gains, and of great challenges when it comes to maintaining a balance between poker and real life stuff that truly matter, such as social life and relationships. As a graduate student in psychology at the University Mental Health Research Institute of Athens, I am given the opportunity to conduct a survey that will hopefully allow me to gain a better understanding of poker players’ unique perspective on emotion regulation and their levels of mental health.

To this date within the social sciences, there has been a limited number of studies on poker, a large percentage of which are mainly examining the game through the lens of gambling pathology. Fortunately, the last few years, there has been a number of publications of high quality poker related research studies, from a rather different perspective; one that treats poker as a game of skill (at least in the long run) that can be played both professionally and recreationally without it being either a cause or a symptom of a mental disorder such as gambling addiction. I am not denying that some poker players can develop a gambling addiction, however that does not mean that poker should be exclusively associated with such behavior.

This research project cannot be carried out without the participation of real poker players. That is why I am asking you, whether you are a poker enthusiast who plays micro stakes for fun or a full-time poker professional, to devote approximately 15 minutes of your time to take the survey (link below) and contribute to a greater and more in depth understanding of the mental life of us, poker players. It’s true that 15 minutes is definitely a large investment in terms of time, one that will not contribute anything to your winrate. What I can promise is to post a summary of the results, which will hopefully be of interest to most of you, once the study is over. As a symbolic way of showing my gratitude to everyone who participates, you are given the option to take part in a raffle where two $50 Amazon.com gift cards will be given away.

https://goo.gl/forms/jMakN8WwUd85wJoC2

Looking forward to getting your responses. Please do not hesitate to post or PM any comments or questions you may have.
Till then, see you at the tables.
Apostolos Oikonomidis

Cliffs/tl;dr

[x] Poker semi-retiree studies poker players’ emotion regulation and mental health.
[x] No commercial or policy making interests involved
[x] Need your help! Click the link above to complete the survey. Takes about 15’.
[x] Chance to win a $50 Amazon.com gift card
[ ] Just another gambling study

done

there has been a limited number of studies on poker,

there have been a limited number......

and in my 100th post the nit is released.... i hope there are sections of the study whcih is the goal of poker as avoiding swings...avoiding emotions...a table full of Spocks...unaware...the only emotion they know is despair and annoyance and omigod

'which' not 'whcih'.

Just going to fill this out now. Interested to see the findings.

Edit: Survey got me in the feels a bit.

done, will you post the results op?

this is a philosophy question, not psychology.


science says a lot of things. what you are equating with easing the problem of destructive mind disorders is THINKING and GOOD THINKING, not "adaptive emotion regulation strategies".

says to contact OP at the end for results. i don't think they want to engage the forum in a discussion.

gl OP

Thank you all for your responses so far! Keep them coming!

Great debate on this, but you're probably right. Too late to edit OP though :/

You're right, although the two fields are heavily intertwined; psychology would probably not exist, at least not as we know it, if it hadn't been for philosophy. The statement you mentioned indicates a belief. Beliefs tend to, at least somewhat, determine our responses to certain stimuli/situations, thus becoming subject of psychology as well.

I'm not quite sure I am getting your point. But if what you're implying is that emotion regulation does not involve at least some "thinking", I would tend to disagree. Being aware of emotions, evaluating how "good" or "bad" they are, and deciding what to do with them/how to react (all of which are part of the process of emotion regulation) requires at least some conscious cognitive effort, aka thinking.

On the contrary,I believe it would be very interesting to get a discussion going and find out more about what you guys think in relation to the subject of my research.

Thanks!

To everyone asking about results, I will definitely post a summary of results once data collection and analysis is over.

Extremely long survey with lots of redundant and difficult to quantify responses, but interesting to complete.

It made me realize a few things, namely how severely my decision making suffers in life when I am "upset" and that I finally seem to have overcome my "hard tilt" and gambling addiction tendencies wrt poker, and that poker has made me much better at controlling my emotions in the rest of my life

Thank you for participating! It's good to hear that acquiring poker experience has been helpful for you.

hey just finished,
some of the questions should have been reworded or are redundant as the previous poster mentioned.
I liked the survey, liked the psychologial aspect

Some of the questions--about stakes, for example--were impossible to answer. (Online I play O8, a little Stud8, and nothing else these days. In my home game, stud w several variations and O8.)

A lot of the questions about mood, status, health, etc., are highly dependent on personal circumstances, and I'm therefore not sure how they function. (Do I, at 74, have less energy and more pain than I used to? But do I worry less about personal things!)

About the postscript: "It has been suggested that acquiring poker experience can potentially act as a learning ground where the individual comes to terms with the nature of variance and is consequently more likely to adopt a more mature attitude in the face of adversities (e.g a large downswing). This acquired emotional maturity can potentially generalize to the way one deals with a variety of unpleasant life events and stressors."

I had to make a major professional decision many years ago -- whether to stay with a highly secure but limited (not just in measures of professional success but also in satisfaction of life) position or to take a very risky move that might leave me unemployed after a year or two. After mulling it over for a week or so, I decided to think of it as comparable to a poker decision, and that allowed me to take what seemed a reasonable risk.

What does annual income have to do with your survey? That is, other than biasing your results by filtering out those who are offended by overly intrusive, unnecessary questions?

yeah , it seemed as though there were a few redundant questions ( not sure if that was your intentions). also kinda surprised at how hard it was for me to grasp questions about emotion.

It would have been interesting to take part in a legitimate poker study. This wasn't it.

Study seems legitimate to me. Looking forward to the results!

no just the paranoid ones

Here's the pregame show, since I'm in a mental hospital, again, and have some time to kill.

'adaptive emotion reaction strategies' sounds really cool. I can't wait to hear all about it.

Here's a different one. Ready to follow along?

Tuma's Plan That He Invented In 5 Minutes, Confirmed By Indpendent Thought

Draw a colored square on a piece of paper.

Draw a second square. Connect both squares by their corners using a line segment.

Close your eyes. And in this order: imagine your first square, the second one, and the connection. Hold this final image in your head as long as possible.

Now do it again - same squares. But connect them along their sides this time.

Recipe:
Do this on a regimented schedule. and more shapes, colors, and dimension. meditation should be involved too.

Or, you could read medical text, or listen to researchers that play follow the leader.

Congrats, please collect your PhD Psych at the door. You are now qualified to serve up lattes at any Starbucks along with all the other "doctors of psychology."

Thanks for your comments guys!

I understand why you may have found some of the questions to be reduntant. Some of them may seem to be similar although in reality they are different (for instance emotional expression vs. subjective emotional experience). Additionally, all of the questions that I'm guessing you refer to are part of validated questionnaires and thus cannot be changed/modified or removed since that would compromise the validity and replicability of the study. Given that the survey includes several of these questionnaires, it is possible that there is a slight conceptual overlap in the constructs being measured and, thus, some similar looking items.


This is a demographic question that is highly relevant to the subject of the study. Although annual income is not a variable of interest per se, it relates to both poker, given that it is a game where financial gains and losses are potentially involved, and mental health outcomes. As a researcher I have to be able to know and describe my sample in terms of some basic characteristics, one of them being the one we are discussing. I'm sorry you found the question intrusive. Maybe other people found the gender, education or other questions intrusive and unnecessary and that is absolutely fine.

I'll make sure to incorporate this in my meditation routine

leave the nice baristas out of it.

also nice to see op back. i'll step aside, maybe learn something for once.