Bwin.Party Launches yourbrainonpoker.com

Bwin.party has launched an interesting project under the domain www.yourbrainonpoker.com. The content of the website is completely free and unbranded, so free to use for educational and other purposes, with an aim of helping players reach deeper understanding of the game we all love so much.

In a nutshell

The website offers a very graphic and unique insight in what happens in your brain while playing poker. It displays different areas of the brain that "light up" at different stages of the game and different situations, depending on how advanced a player is.

There are three different "brains": that of a beginner, of an amateur player and of an expert. Although there isn't much on the site apart from the brain functions, according to the small note sent out to the press today, the site was created through cooperation of poker and content teams.

The brain activity during different stages was measured through monitoring neural activity using EEG headsets. The process was monitored by the research agency SimpleUsability.

What was measured

Using the state of the art software, the brain activities of three different player groups were measured for four stages of the game (deal, flop, turn and river) as well as four different options (check, bet, raise and move all in).

Unless you are a neuroscience expert, you probably won't be able to read too deep into these results, but it is still interesting to see how big differences there are between the brain activity of a beginner and experienced player, and how sometimes completely different stages of the game invoke the activity depending on the skill level.

For example, an all-in move shows extremely strong brain activity for amateur players, while checking induces significantly more activity in a brain of an expert in comparison to an amateur.

Without being an expert, it is fairly easy to conclude that this is probably due to the fact that an amateur is way more involved with the game in the situations that they perceive as really relevant (an all in), while an expert is always trying to gather more information and figure out what his next move could be, even when checking. For amateurs and beginners, checking demonstrates a safe option, that just doesn't require much consideration.

Dealing stage is also a very interesting one, as it creates quite a lot of activity with beginner and amateur players, while it is very minimal with expert players. Experts are relaxed but still very alert during the dealing period.

Deeper analysis

There is a small description accompanying every situation and every measurement, but I will not even try to pretend to know what a 'spike in theta activity' means. It is certainly an interesting site and if you are up for some exploration, check it out. There is definitely some useful info you could pick up.