Elite professional online poker players: Factors underlying success in a gambling game usually associated with financial loss and harm

Most gamblers lose money, and this means that a behavioral dependence to gambling can cause harm. However, some professional gamblers win consistently, and there is little academic literature on their psychology and how they differ from disordered gamblers. To contribute to this understudied area, we qualitatively analyzed interviews with 19 elite online professional poker players, by examining factors from the disordered gambling and decision-making literatures. Like disordered gamblers, participants displayed aspects of a behavioral dependence to gambling, but contrastingly did not generally experience harm. Other contrasts included their rational approach to statistical thinking, a general self-reported tendency to not be impulsive, and their social connections with other experts. One factor that did not yield clear contrasting results was whether or not they experienced early big wins. Parallels with the decision-making literature included their assessment of decision quality based on expected value rather than realized outcomes, their reluctance to take risks outside of their ‘circle of competence,’ and their ‘active open-minded’ thinking style. This study contributes to gambling psychology via an in-depth exploration of an understudied group.