Expert gamblers ‘enjoy numbers and set emotion aside’

AN EXPERT gambler is likely to enjoy numbers, be a good decision-maker who is adept at judging risk and unlikely to be anyway arrogant, according to a UCC academic.

Dr Dylan Evans is a behavioural scientist at the Department of Medicine and is fascinated with risk-taking. In his work, he is attempting to gauge what motivates people to take risk and what makes certain people particularly proficient at risk-taking.

Dr Evans believes that successful gamblers – “those rare people who manage consistently to profit by making informed bets, judge risk in a different way to most other men and women” – display a group of traits that aren’t found in other people.

As part of his latest round of research, he is seeking to establish whether risk intelligence can be taught so that people can learn to take better decisions.

In the first phase of this project, he looked at the “consistent patterns of behaviour” that are found in expert gamblers. This group, he found, were able to set emotion aside when making calculated gambling decisions.

“Unlike leisure gamblers and problem gamblers, the expert gamblers did not get a great kick out of winning – one expert said it was more like the pleasure of a slow burning cigar, whereas less successful gamblers got a real buzz. However, the expert gamblers found losing much more painful. Last, but not least, the expert gamblers knew their weaknesses, unlike less successful gamblers who tended to be overconfident,” he said.

As part of the second phase of this project, he has developed a test for evaluating risk intelligence. He wants to compare their risk intelligence with that of the general population and is asking the general public to answer 50 general knowledge questions on his website

“There is a twist to the questions. Not only do you have to decide whether a statement is true or false, you also have to judge how certain you are that you know, or don’t know, the answer,” he said.

Dr Evans believes expert gamblers are very aware of their limitations – so they don’t get cocky.

“Gambling is to decision-making what Galileo’s inclined plane was to physics. It’s a toy world that allows you to uncover fundamental principles.”

* Go to www.projectionpoint.com for the test.