Maybe They Should Have Asked Hastings '10

Although Cornell senior Brian Hastings won over $4 million playing poker a few weeks ago, the Department of Sociology is out with a new study which cautions that winning may not be as easy as it seems:

A major finding of a new Cornell study of online poker may seem counterintuitive: The more hands players win, the less money they're likely to collect, especially when it comes to novice players.

The likely reason, said Cornell sociology doctoral student Kyle Siler, whose study analyzed 27 million online poker hands, is that the multiple wins are likely for small stakes, and the more you play, the more likely you will eventually be walloped by occasional but significant losses.

My understanding of online poker is that the few people who, like Hastings, win big, are balanced by plenty of people who lose big and get themselves into major debt. If you're good at it and you can win money, that's great. We had a guy in my fraternity a couple of years ago who was a serious poker player and could make a few hundred dollars in a night by playing against weaker players online.

But for every person who wins money, there are plenty who lose.