Laboratoire de Physique Théorique
Toulouse - UMR 5152

We present a simple model of Texas hold’em poker tournaments which retains the two main aspects of the game : i. the minimal bet grows exponentially with time ; ii. players have a finite probability to bet all their money. The distribution of the fortunes of players not yet eliminated is found to be independent of time during most of the tournament, and reproduces accurately data obtained from Internet tournaments and world championship events. This model also makes the connection between poker and the persistence problem widely studied in physics, as well as some recent physical models of biological evolution, and extreme value statistics.

• [violet]Lire le texte introductif et vulgarisé à l’article (en français)[/violet]

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• Download the preprint article : Universal statistical properties of poker tournaments and the reprint of the published article in JSTAT

• Download the associated talk Universal properties of poker tournaments : persistence, the “leader problem”, extreme value statistics

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• Download the popularization talk From the Cold War to poker tournaments : introduction to game theory (in English) ; télécharger la conférence de vulgarisation De la guerre froide aux tournois de poker : introduction à la théorie des jeux (en français)

• Read the article by the Scientific American on this work

• Read the article by PhysOrg.com on this work

• Read the comment by the 2+2 Poker Magazine (Sept. 2011) on this work

• Lire le post Borel et von Neumann : Deux grands mathématiciens précurseurs de la théorie du poker sur le blog poker du journal Libération

• This work also received media coverage in The New Scientist, BBC Focus, Poker Live Magazine, Toulouse Mag, Sciences & Avenir (juin 2012)...

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