Barking up the wrong tree

A new Cornell study of online poker seems 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.

This finding, Siler said, "coincides with observations in behavioral economics that people overweigh their frequent small gains vis-à-vis occasional large losses, and vice versa." In other words, players feel positively reinforced by their streak of wins but have difficulty fully understanding how their occasional large losses offset their gains.

Here's the answer to whether women are good luck charms when men go to the casino.

This country is the largest online poker market in the world.

The WSJ has an unbelieveable story of a gambler who lost $127 million dollars in one year.

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