most folks going for their doctorate. If they had anything else to do with their lives, they would probably be doing it rather than prolonging their adolescence as a professional student. One of these doctoral students decided he would use his ample spare time and some poker tracker software to figure out what goes on in an online poker room. After analyzing 27 million hands, he found out that poker players who won the most hands tended to lose the most money. Those of us who count on overconfident newbies to lay down big bets after stealing a few blinds wish this guy would just shut the hell up and not ruin this for us.
Kyle Siler of Cornell University is the smart ass with the Poker Tracker software and empty social calendar who decided to do this online poker research. He limited his study to No Limit Texas Holdem that involved six players. As was previously mentioned, he discovered that those who won the most hands of holdem tended also to lose the most money. What he also discovered was the poker players who lost the most cash were novices. He was then treated at a local hospital for wounds suffered from this blinding flash of the obvious.
Siler’s conclusions have been printed in Time magazine and the Journal of Gambling Studies. It is amazing what passes for science these days. He could have simply asked someone who actually plays poker about this issue rather than take valuable time away from his World of Warcraft game by studying 27 million online no limit Texas Holdem hands. He didn’t expose anything that an experienced poker player didn’t already know. Next I suppose he will conclusively prove that badgers have foul tempers or that Phil Hellmuth gets really mad when he losses.
