(Newswire.net — April 5, 2017) — If you’ve ever seen a professional poker player win an incredibly large amount of money, then it’s likely that you’ve daydreamed about packing in your day job and making your millions as a professional poker player. However, is winning as simple as luck and practice, or is there more to an expert poker player than meets the eye?
A recent study tried to answer this by examining the brains of expert, amateur and beginner poker players wired up to EEG headsets. The data from the headsets was then visualised into brain maps in order to determine the differences in brain activity during different stages of the game.
The study itself, carried out in August 2014, was conducted on two groups of three players. Each group consisted of an expert, amateur and beginner player playing Texas Hold’em for 40 minutes. One of the groups played for money, while the other had no money stakes for the amateur and beginner player and only small stakes for the expert.
Brain Maps from the Your Brain On Poker Study
The brain maps revealed different emotional reactions between experts and amateurs. Every time a bluffed raise occurred the expert players showed very little activity in their right frontal lobe, revealing that expert players had a much greater control over their emotions. The amateur players, however, showed much more activity in the right frontal lobe, showing that they had much less control of their emotions. The lack of emotion from the expert players shows that they were in control of their plays and is one of the reasons why the experts make better players.
This difference in emotion between the two levels of players was again shown during a ‘turn’ move where the amateurs showed high levels of activity in the right frontal lobe – the brain’s emotion area. The experts showed equal activity on both the right and left sides of their brain, an activity level which is most commonly seen in people calculating mathematical problems. This brain activity suggested that expert players use both logic and intuition when calculating a move, rather than succumbing to their emotions.
The problem of letting your emotions play for you was shown throughout the study for both the amateur and beginner players, who every time they got a bad hand or had a poor performance, would let these negative emotions affect them for far longer in comparison to the experts. The experts were able to overcome negative feelings far more quickly in order to return to a more logical approach to the game. The expert players were also far quicker at making important decisions effectively, whereas an amateur player would mull over their choices.
Ultimately the study showed that although amateur players could make wins, they play far differently to an expert player. The experts have honed their brains to perform like the well-exercised muscles of an Olympic athlete. They were simply too good for amateurs to compete against.