‘This is just so unfair!’: A qualitative analysis of loss-induced emotions and tilting in on-line poker

Abstract

Poker is a game of skill and chance, where players often experience significant monetary losses. Detrimental out-of-control poker decision-making due to negative emotions is known as tilting. A qualitative assessment of losing and tilting was conducted by analysing stories about significant monetary losses, written by Finnish on-line poker players (N = 60). Thematic and narrative analyses uncovered five themes and a narrative structure underlying the aetiology and phenomenology of tilting. Tilting, in the narratives, was often instigated by dissociative feelings (‘unreality’, disbelief) following a significant monetary loss. Thereafter, moral indignation was experienced, followed by chasing behaviour, in an attempt to restore a ‘fair balance’ between wins and losses. In the aftermath of tilting, self-focused feelings of disappointment, depression and/or anxiety, and sleeping problems were experienced. It was also observed that experienced players, as compared to inexperienced ones, exhibited in their narratives a more mature disposition towards encountering ‘bad luck’, and losing in general. The results are relevant in better understanding psychological processes related to losing in the multifaceted game of poker, thus contributing also to existing knowledge on detrimental gambling behaviour.

Keywords:

• on-line poker
• tilting
• poker experience
• phenomenology of losing
• emotions

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies, the Kone Foundation, and the Academy of Finland for their financial support in this project. We also wish to thank the following Finnish poker communities for their interest in our research: www.pokerisivut.com, www.pokeritieto.com and www.pokerista.net. Lastly, we are grateful to Apophenia for providing us with ideas and inspiration. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Participation in this Internet-based study was voluntary, and the anonymity of all respondents was guaranteed. Information provided by respondents will be used only for scientific purposes.

Notes

1. We previously presented a scale for measuring poker experience: The poker experience scale, PES (Palomäki et al., 2012a). PES includes a third question (‘What level of stakes do you normally play at?’). The current data were collected prior to introducing PES, whose final version was thus not used here. The ‘proto-version’ of PES used here had a satisfactory internal validity (Cronbach's alpha = .67). See Glossary for ‘poker hand’.

2. The term by-product refers to a ‘secondary’ outcome of a cognitive mechanism, which originally evolved to solve a ‘primary’ problem during the natural history of the organism. By-products are also observed when a formerly adaptive function ‘ends up’ in an unfamiliar environment (Tooby & Cosmides, 2005).