BECAUSE IT'S FREE POKER! A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FREE TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER TOURNAMENTS

Abstract

The game of poker has dramatically increased in popularity in America over the past decade, and includes a new trend in poker in which tournaments are played with no monetary wagering. These “free” poker tournaments are the primary focus of this project. Our interest in these free poker tournaments was twofold: first, we wished to identify what would motivate a person to play poker when there is no profit motive; second, we wanted to learn how the social dynamics of the game itself may or may not change when monetary risk is not present. Through covert participant observation of free poker tournaments at four different locations we were able to discover three main motivations among the players: sharpening skills for later cash games, sociability, and gaining the status of a “regular player.” We also discovered that the tenor and tempo of the game tended to vary not as a function of the location, but rather because of the social class of the players. We offer several hypotheses to guide future research endeavors in this area.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank John Lynxwiler and the three anonymous reviewers for their comments and insight. We would also like to acknowledge Diane Taub, Anson Shupe, Michael Nusbaumer, and Peter Iadicola for commenting on earlier drafts of this manuscript. Finally, we are indebted to the stranger for his assistance with this project.

Notes

¹Interestingly, while only nine percent of the subjects in Smith and Preston's (1984) study reported that they gamble to win money, when asked why other people gamble, 42 percent of respondents replied “for monetary profit.” The discrepancies between one's own motivations for gambling and the perceived motivations of others' gambling may be indicative of actor-observer bias (Jones and Nisbett 1971) or some other form of attribution error (Ross 1977). This line of reasoning, although interesting, is only speculative on the part of the authors at this time.

Note. Approximate population size of cities are as follows. City A – 750,000; City B – 250,000; City C – 550,000.

²It should be noted that in order to protect the anonymity of the players in these tournaments, as well as the establishments where these tournaments were played, pseudonyms have been used for the names of the bars and any individuals we mention. Furthermore, in an effort to increase the anonymity factor, the cities where the bars are located have been assigned a letter designation.

³For the entire year of 2006, slightly less than 24,000 people nationwide were listed as having earned any points during a free poker tournaments. Only the 480 top point earners in 2006 were invited to participate in the nationwide free poker tournament. An odds estimate shows that among the players who earned points, there was approximately a two percent chance of making it to the national tournament, with the odds of winning the grand prize (a $10,000 buy-in to the World Series of Poker) being .004 percent.