Problem Gambling and Dan Bilzerian (two unrelated topics!) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Last week, we spent some time in class talking about problem gambling. I wanted to make sure to give a careful treatment of this in the event that any of my students really do get into poker (or other forms of gambling) as a result of how much we're playing in this class, and tell them some things I wish I knew when I got started. The author of our textbook told me that he also does this.

The first thing that surprised me was how difficult it was to find good resources to help me discuss the topic. For example, the first google hit brought me here. Right out the gates, this webpage says, "The odds are never in your favor whether it is poker, blackjack, or anything else..."



Aside from being patently false, it also is really not the point. The point that I want to make is that gambling can be an addictive and/or problematic activity regardless of whether you are a skilled player with the ability to win in the long run.

For example, when I first started getting serious about poker, I recall feeling compulsive cravings to play, and having it be all I could think about even if I was doing something else really important or even fun (a specific ski weekend comes to mind). But I thought, "Well I'm winning. It can't be problem gambling if I'm actually doing well at it, right?" (Spoiler alert: Wrong. See below for more details.)

Thankfully for me, things didn't get any worse than that, and within not too long I managed to turn it into a hobby with which I had a healthy relationship, both financially and emotionally. But, even though things turned out fine for me, I still wish that I had known to acknowledge at least the possibility that I might have or be headed towards a problem. Thus, I want to equip my students with the tools to both recognize if this might be happening, and to know what they can do if it does, whether they are successfully identifying +EV situations in their gambling endeavors or not.

And if the organization behind the website I linked above does not even understand gambling at this basic level, then I am going to have a hard time trusting their advice on how to handle problem gambling and addiction.

So, I reached out to a contact I met a few years ago at a statistics conference, named Dr. Matthew Tom (@MattTom857). He is also a poker player and works at the Division of Addiction at Cambridge Health Alliance, and he gave me a bunch of good things to look at and use. This was super helpful to get me started.

I won't rehash everything here, but the takeaways from our class discussion last week were:

• You do not need to be addicted to have a gambling problem; problem gambling starts when it becomes disruptive to your life in any manner
• You also do not need to be financially impacted for it to be a gambling problem; for example, if you are playing within your financial means but it is taking over your life and getting in the way of your friendships, this is problem gambling
• While it is possible to be a long run winner at certain games (including but not limited to poker), it takes hard work, and much much more so to be good enough to make a living at it. Moreover, it requires an enormous bankroll to have a reasonable probability of withstanding the swings due to the large variance inherent in poker and pretty much every other casino game by design (which we will in fact discuss mathematically later on in this course).
• With that being said, this course is NOT a course on poker strategy. So although we are playing lots of poker and learning about how to calculate probabilities, many of which are indeed relevant to poker strategy, "getting good at poker" is not the goal of the course. Thus, my students should not leave this course thinking that they are necessarily winning players; that will require effort of a different kind if they want that to be the case!

I plan to re-visit this several times as we continue on with the semester. If it gets old for my students, so be it, because I think this is too important to be left as a mere sidebar.


Now, onto Dan Bilzerian. The other day, I overheard a couple of my students talking about him, and I immediately chimed in with, “It’s so funny to hear you talking about Dan Bilzerian...”

The reason why it’s funny is because of all the things to be at the intersection of my experience and my students', of course it would be that guy. I only know of him through poker, but I also know that he is one of those characters in poker who has notoriety for other reasons. Specifically, he has garnered a large Instagram following due to all of the pictures that he posts from his lavish lifestyle of cars, guns, and rolling with scantily clad women.

My students asked me if Bilzerian is actually any good at poker. I said that I haven’t seen him play enough to make a real judgement, but from what I’ve learned on podcasts and forums, he might be decent but he’s definitely not a world class player and has some leaks in his fundamentals. To be fair, Bilzerian himself does not claim to be one of the world's best at poker; his explanation is that he has made all his money in the private Hollywood games that he is invited to play in because of his boisterous and entertaining personality.

Nevertheless, Doug Polk made a youtube video earlier this year in which he bashes Bilzerian’s play throughout clips from a live stream that Bilzerian had posted online. Now, to a degree I think Polk was more talking smack than giving actual advice, but to the extent that any of his words were serious, one would be wise to listen to them as Doug Polk was, at one point not too long ago, indisputably one of the best heads up no-limit hold’em players in the world (he has not played that much since that point, in part because no one will play him). You can check out the Bilzerian-bashing video here (warning: language, a sample Bilzerian Instagram photo, and lots of poker talk that may or may not be interesting to readers of this blog). I have mixed feelings about Polk because of just how abrasive he is (maybe I'm just getting old...) but I will say that I highly respect his poker ability, whereas not so much for Bilzerian. Then again, what do I know, I’m just a micro-stakes recreational player these days...


Finally, we had our first poker night for the class last week. I didn't take too many pictures, but here's one of the last four standing:

Final four players standing. I think I actually had just busted out in fifth. From left
to right, we have: Jake O'Neill, Jill Falduto, John Thomas and Sarah Thompson.
John Thomas (@AmishJohnThomas) is about to go all-in here.

Edit: filling in some names after receiving student permission. Jill Falduto came in 2nd, and our champion was Sarah Thompson!


Next up: We are in the middle of Counting Methods (Permutations/Combinations). Tomorrow I am planning to put my students in pairs and give them cards to have them deal hole cards and the flop, identify the outs for whoever is behind, and calculate the probability of coming from behind in each situation that they have dealt.