Poker-related academic study (cliffs@end)

(Permission for this thread has been granted by givememyleg)

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

• Poker semi-retiree studies poker players’ emotion regulation and mental health.
• No commercial or policy making interests involved
• Need your help! Click the link above to complete the survey. Takes about 15’.
• Chance to win a $50 Amazon.com gift card
• Not just another gambling study

That was quite fun. There were times I felt like I was giving conflicting answers, such as agreeing with both the statements "I often think losing is unfair" and "there is nothing unfair about losing". But this highlights my thought process in dealing with tilt... when negative variance is biting me in the ass, I feel like I'm not getting my "fair share". But that's just the knee-jerk emotional reaction to losing money. Understanding that "fairness" is not a factor when it comes to probability is what usually makes me get my shit together. I definitely suffer from short-term tilt, but it doesn't tend to last long because I am capable of quickly taking back control of my emotions.

I found tilt much harder to cope with when I was semi-professional. When there's a need to make money, it's much harder to get myself back into a relaxed frame of mind, and I would play badly, making irrational plays. That ultimately made me realise I wasn't cut out for professional poker, but that realisation also allows me to enjoy it for the profitable hobby it is.

Good luck with the research.

I'm not sure if you're interested in my participation in this study. Here's why:

I quit online poker many years ago after a bit over 1 year of playing/studying poker games full time.
I had to quit because I was having panic attacks while playing, and nothing I was doing could eliminate them.

On the one hand, this seems like exactly the type of thing you're interested in, but on the other, I haven't been a poker player in many years.

I will participate if it fits your study.
Let me know.

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Originally Posted by OngBonga

That was quite fun. There were times I felt like I was giving conflicting answers, such as agreeing with both the statements "I often think losing is unfair" and "there is nothing unfair about losing". But this highlights my thought process in dealing with tilt... when negative variance is biting me in the ass, I feel like I'm not getting my "fair share". But that's just the knee-jerk emotional reaction to losing money. Understanding that "fairness" is not a factor when it comes to probability is what usually makes me get my shit together. I definitely suffer from short-term tilt, but it doesn't tend to last long because I am capable of quickly taking back control of my emotions.

I found tilt much harder to cope with when I was semi-professional. When there's a need to make money, it's much harder to get myself back into a relaxed frame of mind, and I would play badly, making irrational plays. That ultimately made me realise I wasn't cut out for professional poker, but that realisation also allows me to enjoy it for the profitable hobby it is.

Good luck with the research.

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Thank you so much for participating!

Your comment is very interesting. Although we may know that there is nothing unfair about losing, and it's all about the odds, we sometimes feel that losing is unfair. At the heat of the moment, our reaction is reflex like and is not subjected to rational cognitive processing, and thus we end up reacting in ways that we cannot justify later on when we re-examine the situation. That's why taking a break, even a short one, when things go really bad can be truly helpful.

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Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

I'm not sure if you're interested in my participation in this study. Here's why:

I quit online poker many years ago after a bit over 1 year of playing/studying poker games full time.
I had to quit because I was having panic attacks while playing, and nothing I was doing could eliminate them.

On the one hand, this seems like exactly the type of thing you're interested in, but on the other, I haven't been a poker player in many years.

I will participate if it fits your study.
Let me know.

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Thank you for your interest in my study. You can go ahead and take the survey.

I'm also sorry to hear that poker has triggered such high anxiety for you in the past. I hope that this is no longer an issue for you, otherwise I would suggest asking for some help. I know that panic attacks are very distressing, yet quite manageable in terms of treatment.

As OngBonga mentioned above, it can be really stressful when you know that the outcome of a few thousand hands will ,at least somewhat, determine your ability to pay the bills at the end of the month. That's why new small stakes players trying to go pro are faced with so much stress and uncertainty, whereas established pros, who have already built a decent bankroll and thus have the luxury of having a few bad months, are much better off despite playing in much tougher/higher stakes games.

OK, done.

The answers are a bit odd, since I don't play anymore and the anxiety I used to feel is long behind me.

Glad to help, though.

How did you get over it?
I don't recall having a lot of poker related anxiety, but it got really bad when I was super tryhard in Starcraft. What worked for me was not focusing on winning as much and make goals for myself like working on a specific part of my game. That way I went in not expecting to win but simply to improve. That and having a pre-game routine that involved some non-ladder practice that required very little willpower to get into and that made it easier to transition into ladder games.

Anxiety is a form of arousal mixed with fear. A panic attack is when the arousal associated with the fear becomes too high and overwhelms the person.

You can try to change your thought process so that you convert the arousal associated with fear to the arousal associated with some kind of positive expectation (excitement). If you're anxious, it's because you're aroused by what could go wrong. If you're excited, it's because you're aroused by what could go right.

If you monitor the thoughts of your inner voice, while you're anxious these will revolve around what can go wrong. If you intervene at these moments you can replace those thoughts with excited thoughts. So to use poker as an example, if a hand is underway and you're thinking to yourself 'fuck i could lose my stack here if i mess up, then how will i pay my rent and buy my girlfriend that ring she wants, and zomg fucking hell zomg', the instant you notice that thought happening you can consciously intervene and tell yourself 'heyehey i could win a big pile of money here, move into a nicer place on the beach, and get my girlfriend a nice ring'. Just saying the latter words, even if you don't necessarily believe them, will help convert your anxiety to excitement. If you do that kind of intervention regularly enough soon the internal voice will start saying the positive words as a matter of habit and you won't need to do it consciously anymore. Because the unconscious is basically stupid, just hearing those words in your inner voice will change your emotional state.

Of course that doesn't guarantee you will win more money, because that depends on how you play. But you will experience a more positive feeling while you do play.

First things first: I am calling my experiences panic attacks. No professional in any psychological field has verified that I am talking about what they would consider a panic attack.

Upon reflection, I don't think the stress was directly related to poker. The stress was related to the inner knowledge that I was grinding a less than living wage, and that I really didn't see myself as a professional poker player. All this was while I was unemployed with a college degree in physics, and milking my dad to pay my rent. I also think, upon reflection, that was hiding from my bigger dreams and hiding from the greater society of (to me, unpredictable) people.

This manifested in me having extreme shivers and cold sweats which involved painful muscle spasms. I would play poker under a blanket and still feel the spasms of shivering. This would begin ~30 minutes into a grinding session and last ~2 hours. The other 4 - 6 hours of grind were smooth sailing. I know this sounds like a long slog to many players, but I was good about managing my mental fatigue and quitting for the day when I needed to.

I was being careful with my sleep, diet and exercise at the time. I mean: I wasn't setting schedules, but keeping goals of allowing for 8 hours of sleep every night (whether or not I used/ needed it, it was available), making sure to elevate my heart rate daily, and eating lots of raw veggies with my meals. It could have been more rigorous, but it is more than I'm doing now.

***
If I had been more aware of my actual stressors at the time, I think I may have managed it better, but IDK. I'm loving my career and life in general lately, so I don't have any regrets about stepping away from online poker.

I would not use the word arousal in conjunction with my panic attacks.
In fact, arousal is kind of the extreme opposite of what I was experiencing.

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Originally Posted by mojo

This manifested in me having extreme shivers and cold sweats which involved painful muscle spasms.

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I'm no expert, obviously, but this seems like anxiety induced panic attacks. Real, physical consequences of mental anguish. At least you had reason for this... a lot of people suffer from this for no apparent reason.

It's definitely distinct from depression, while the two can certainly be related. I have suffered from depression in the past, but rarely anxiety, and never extreme. The worst anxiety I've felt is agitation, perhaps feeling flustered.

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In fact, arousal is kind of the extreme opposite of what I was experiencing.

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I assume he means "arousal" in the context of "evoke". Arousal isn't the best word because of its more familiar use, but it's not an inaccurate use of the word.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

I would not use the word arousal in conjunction with my panic attacks.
In fact, arousal is kind of the extreme opposite of what I was experiencing.

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'Arousal' in this context refers to your overall physical state - heart rate, blood pressure, etc.. not whether you were turned on sexually (or whatever else you might be thinking).

Edit: though it is kinda funny to go back and read what i said before while assuming arousal means 'turned on'. So you have a panic attack because you're horny and scared at the same time. lol.

But anyways, that sounds like a pretty awful experience to have to go through on a regular basis. I'm glad you're into better days MMM.

Thanks. I struggled with it for less than a month before I realized that nothing I was trying was alleviating the attacks. Once the phrase "panic attack" entered my thoughts, there was a rapid switch in my behavior. Once I identified what I was feeling, it was easy to find the solution.

My inner dialogue:
Doing X makes me physically uncomfortable, even sore.
Then don't do X, genius.
... but, but, but...
Nope. Stop. You're hurting yourself. Stop. Now.

***
I am truly living the dream right now (well, my dream at any rate). Anything which helped me shrug off misconceptions about { who I am / what I want / how I find happiness } was all worth it.

I'm not sure x causes a problem stop x is always the best line of reasoning.

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Originally Posted by Savy

I'm not sure x causes a problem stop x is always the best line of reasoning.

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Sure. I believe in a bit of healthy sacrifice for the greater good.

In that situation, the "greater good" was mediocre for me.

That said... in general, I think it applies more often than not.

I did the survey. Did I pass?

I hope my answers will help to spread awareness.

Thank you all for your participation guys!

MadMojoMonkey thank you for sharing your experiences, albeit distressing ones.I think your story is a prime example of someone doing the "wrong thing" (quitting because of your anxiety) and yet ending up in a much better place. It's really good to hear that it worked out for you.

In a vacuum, what Savy mentioned is probably true most of the time. Especially when it comes to anxiety, it's usually not optimal to modify our behavior so as to avoid facing a situation that causes fear or discomfort (given that the situation is generally benign, and not actually threatening). It is actually quite common for people to use avoidance as a means of coping with anxiety provoking situations. What happens is that by getting away of the supposedly threatening situation, anxiety levels drop, making us feel better right away. This way we slowly learn that avoiding this specific is a good thing, and so we keep doing that over and over until it gets deeply engrained in our behavior. The problem is that especially during tough and stressfull timesduring one's life, like the ones MMM described, anxiety knows no limits, and there may always be new things that appear threatening in our mind. And since we have learnt to deal with them simply by avoiding them, what we end up doing is building a whole range of situations that we avoid, thus limiting our own lives due to fears that are, to a large extent, irrational.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by oskar

How did you get over it?
I don't recall having a lot of poker related anxiety, but it got really bad when I was super tryhard in Starcraft. What worked for me was not focusing on winning as much and make goals for myself like working on a specific part of my game. That way I went in not expecting to win but simply to improve. That and having a pre-game routine that involved some non-ladder practice that required very little willpower to get into and that made it easier to transition into ladder games.

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That's a great example of optimal goal setting. I find it quite common for poker players to set goals like "i wanna win X amount of money or bb/100 this month". A goal that's poorly stated mainly because winning involves variables that we can't really control, thus leaving open the possibility that we do our best, play our best, put in the hands, and yet fail to meet the goal and end up dissapointed. Whereas goals such as "i'm gonna play X amount of hands", "i'm going to quit when i'm not on my A game", "i'm gonna spend X amount of time reviewing hands" etc are more manageable to fulfil and are generally related to winning, without that being the focal point per se.

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Originally Posted by 6thStreet

MadMojoMonkey thank you for sharing your experiences, albeit distressing ones.[...]

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It's all good.
You've given me some food for thought.
Your psychology cred is off to a good start with me.
:p

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 6thStreet

In a vacuum, what Savy mentioned is probably true most of the time. [...]

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I want to argue with a lot of this as pertains to me, directly, but I can't.
In my head, it all sounds like me being defensive and fits into the self-fulfilling feedback loop you describe.
It's going to take me some time to reexamine what happened.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 6thStreet

[...]Whereas goals such as "i'm gonna play X amount of hands", "i'm going to quit when i'm not on my A game", "i'm gonna spend X amount of time reviewing hands" etc are more manageable to fulfil and are generally related to winning, without that being the focal point per se.

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:lol:
If I had the patience, I could dig up a dozen posts where I was advising new players exactly this.

Your poker cred. is off to a good start with me, too.
:)

We have a rather consistent group of science-minded posters, here in the FTR Community forum.
I hope you join some of our conversations, or start some for us to join in on.
In short.. stick around. Most of us are good people, most of the time.

Done and happy to provide some words if needed. As somebody that regularly goes on 30BI ups and downs in short periods (the former when running hot, the latter when running below average and tilting hard), I've always had a hard time regulating tilt in poker. That's always seemed totally bizarre to me, because I've never had any problems with controlling my emotions at work or during sports and other games which have much less of a luck element in the short term. I'm sure that's because I have overwhelming sense of entitlement and an in-built expectation that I'll win at any kind of logic and mental arithmetic activity against 99% of the population (whether reasonable or not).

In terms of anxiety, I've never lost any sleep over a losing session. I do have an essential tremor though, which can be off the chart after a long and intense session. It can be problematic at work too and occasionally manifest itself in actual nerves in terms of being anxious about looking anxious (when I'm not actually anxious!), which makes the tremor worse. I haven't worked out the solution to this yet, other than booze helps a lot.

On a related note, one area I'd be really interested in looking into is the role of confidence in sport and games. In English football, it's weird how teams can go from losing every week to winning every week after just one trigger, like sneaking a late equaliser in a dire match.

Edit: also worth noting my win rate quoted in the survey includes rakeback. Not sure if that's correct, but that's what I've done as it reflects >half my winnings.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey

Sure. I believe in a bit of healthy sacrifice for the greater good.

In that situation, the "greater good" was mediocre for me.

That said... in general, I think it applies more often than not.

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The actual general answer is there is no reason not to be dealing with something that negatively effects you. Avoidance is very specific, in terms of poker then it may work but if you were earning a lot more playing poker than was reasonable to expect from anything else is avoidance the acceptable thing?

This may sound like general nonsense crap advice but I really don't think it is. Maybe if you assume you can optimally deal with everything it comes across that way but if you realise this to be completely false it works. Or maybe it's just some step one bullshit that people use to sell shit to people (i.e. step one admit you have a problem).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Bean Counter

I haven't worked out the solution to this yet, other than booze helps a lot.

On a related note, one area I'd be really interested in looking into is the role of confidence in sport and games. In English football, it's weird how teams can go from losing every week to winning every week after just one trigger, like sneaking a late equaliser in a dire match.

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First bit booze doesn't help at all bar covering up the symptoms of the problem.

Second bit, I'm pretty sure this has been looked into and it's actually mostly made up shit. The narratives spun in the media about certain topics, especially sports, really do try their best to frame things in stories which invoke the public.

I imagine you're talking about something like Leicester but that comes down to players wanting to get rid of a manager, note that the media spun this as Kante being GOAT hence Chelsea now winning & Leicester losing. This coupled with some run good (even better for the media) and we have false narratives that are easy to write.

Also think of the bias, a team changes manager and they do better for a bit -> story new manager saves the day etc

A team changes manager and results are similar -> there is no story.

The third option about changing and them doing worse tends to not come up that much because the team has to be doing badly for them to change manager & when it does it gets blamed on the players not the manager.

Hey guys,
I want to thank you all for participating and/or providing feedback for the project. There are still a few days left before the survey ends, for anyone who is still willing to contribute. I will be back with results which will hopefully generate more fruitful discussion.