Did you hear? Online poker is not as addictive as we thought, and moreover, if you never believed in those poker gurus, think again. The Harvard researchers say they have found scientific evidence of poker being a game of skills. The original Harvard Medical School study has made these findings under the title “Sitting at the Virtual Poker Table: Results from the First Ever Epidemiological Study of Actual Internet Poker Gaming Behavior” by The Division of Addictions had already been released and published in the press.

The results from the longest longitudinal and the first ever epidemiological study of the Internet gaming behavior carried out by the Division on Addicts, Cambridge Health Alliance, a Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate, in collaboration with BWIN, the Austria-based leading gaming service provider on the internet. The collaboration started in 2005 and aims to study the scientific rationale for conspicuous gambling behavior and its effects on what is known as “responsible gaming”.

The study has a sample size of 3,445 online poker players and has been conducted over a time span of two years. The following findings have been made in the study.

1. The myth of the alluring power of online gambling is busted. It is no more provocative than offline gambling. Moreover, the availability of online gambling and gambling addiction are not correlated.

2. Responsible gaming measures are indeed effective.

Online Players are Rational in Behavior
The research provided additional evidence in support of the previous research carried out by the same institute showed that most subscribers moderately gambled on the Internet. Correlation analyses indicated that as the percent of losses increased, duration,
Total Gambling Sessions, and Total Amount Wagered all decreased. This clearly suggested that individuals modified their behavior based on whether they were winning or losing, thus exhibiting “rational” betting behavior according to Howard Shaffer, PH.D., Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School, Director, Division on Addictions, The Cambridge Health Alliance, a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School.
Manfred Bodner, the co-CEO of BWIN expressed the intention of the researchers to replace speculation with scientific evidence for understanding the online poker player behavior. He expressed their interest in developing algorithms of explaining behavior patterns and the risk factors and trends linked with disordered and faulty gaming.

Study Factors

• The average sample age was 27.9 years.
• The 95% of the population was of the masculine gender.
• The median for the activity of an average player was six and a half months, and appeared in a median of a poker session per three days.
• The median wager per session amounted to €13.
• The median cost of playing poker per session amounted to €1.80.
• The most active group, which constituted 5% of the sample, was active for a period of 18.5 months and appeared in ten sessions per week. This 5% subgroup lost the least amount comparatively, which clearly indicates that Poker is a game of skills and the more frequent you play it, the better are your chances of improving and further refining your skills.
• Examining the same more active group, which put more time and money in the poker games, it was found that they reduced Euros per session and decreased their wager with the increase in the percent of losses like the rest of the sample. This means the more they got to play the game, the more rational their betting behavior became.

What to Make Out of It?
Although the results of the study published on various websites portray the addiction factor of poker and online gambling as the main highlight, but you cannot help but observe the small sub-group of 5% winning most of the games, losing the least, lowering their wages with the increase in the percent of losses.
Well more than anything else, the researchers should simply recognize it as bankroll management, and there is no wonder why this subgroup is winning more often and losing lesser than the others. They should too. However, the only thing that is shocking is the fact that only 5% of the people do so.
Looking at the other side of the picture we see that 95% of people are not being as successful as the 5% sub-group, who are more likely to lose money despite managing their bankroll properly. The good news is that they have found that poker is a game of skill, so you can be sure that if you rely on developing your skills and on the skills that you have already developed, you can find a plenty of success with online poker, because there are 95% of the poker players to beat.

Conclusion
Without getting into the statistical complications, a common sense conclusion that can be extracted from the study is simply what the researchers have mainly found out from this exercise. Poker is without a doubt, a game of skill and tact. It even helps you making good decisions and strategy in the opinion of Andrew M. Woods, the Executive Director of Harvard Law School’s Global Strategic Thinking Society commenting on the control exhibited by the online poker players, and expressed no surprise over the findings.  Also, effective bankroll management is essential to the success of its players, and the impression that online gambling is more addictive as compared to the conventional one is totally proved wrong. So, the next time when anyone teases you to be addicted to online gambling, you can quote them the findings from the Harvard study.